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PRINCETON  •  NEW  JERSEY 

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THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


THE  NAZARENE 


BOOKS  BY 

ROLLIN  LYNDE  HARTT 

Confessions  of  a  Clergyman 
The  Man  Himself 
Understanding  the  French 


e/CAL  sew 


tov 


COPYRIGHT,  1923,  BY 
DOUBLEDAY,  PAGE  &  COMPANY 
ALL  RIGHTS  RESERVED,  INCLUDING  THAT  OF  TRANSLATION 
INTO  FOREIGN  LANGUAGES,  INCLUDING  THE  SCANDINAVIAN 

PRINTED  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES 
AT 

THE  COUNTRY  LIFE  PRESS,  GARDEN  CITY,  N.  Y. 


First  Edition 


FOREWORD 


Beginning  at  the  beginning  and  keeping  on 
uninterruptedly  to  the  very  end,  I  have  been  read¬ 
ing  a  heretical  book.  It  upsets  theologies.  It 
demolishes  creeds.  It  sweeps  away  traditions  with 
a  recklessness  altogether  amazing.  It  is  called  the 
Bible. 

During  three  years  of  my  youth  I  was  a  student 
at  a  famous  divinity  school.  There  no  one  had 
read  the  Bible  all  through  uninterruptedly  from 
beginning  to  end.  It  was  not  the  way.  The  way 
was  to  read  it  a  passage  at  a  time. 

But  the  isolated  passage,  like  a  detached  frag¬ 
ment  of  a  mosaic,  invites  endless  misinterpretation. 
It  is  only  when  one  sets  aside  the  evenings  of  three 
months  and  reads  the  Bible  all  through  from  be¬ 
ginning  to  end  uninterruptedly  that  the  Bible 
reveals  its  nature,  its  purpose,  and  its  meaning.  It 
reveals  them  clearly  then.  It  requires  no  inter¬ 
preter  save  the  open  mind — that  is  to  say,  a  mind 


VI 


FOREWORD 


able  to  divest  itself  of  prepossessions  and  read  what 
is  plainly  written  in  plain  words. 

Toward  the  end,  a  sublime  figure  emerges — a 
figure  so  incomparably  majestic  that  not  even  the 
admixtures  of  legend  and  metaphysics  in  his 
biographies — no,  nor  the  theological  addenda  con¬ 
tributed  by  primitive  and  naively  incautious 
propagandists — can  hide  his  greatness. 

A  strange  personality  he  will  seem  at  first,  so 
little  are  we  accustomed  to  hear  anything  believ¬ 
able  about  him,  anything  understandable,  anything 
that  can  bring  him  at  all  close  to  us.  And  a  strange 
personality  he  was.  Much  that  he  believed,  no 
living  man  believes.  Yet,  simply  by  reading  the 
Bible  all  through  uninterruptedly,  one  comes  to 
see  why  he  believed  as  he  did.  By  the  same  simple 
method  one  comes  to  see  that  the  man  himself,  far 
from  dwindling  when  legendary  and  metaphysical 
accretions  are  erased  from  his  biography,  takes  on 
a  grandeur  no  theology  has  ever  succeeded  in  giv¬ 
ing  him. 

In  the  following  pages  this  will  not  at  first  be 
apparent.  Unavoidably,  the  first  impression  will 
be  one  of  strangeness.  But  in  due  course  it  will 


FOREWORD 


vu 


be  seen  that  the  strangeness  is  the  result  purely  of 
his  Orientalism  and  of  the  exceedingly  long  period 
separating  his  time  from  our  own,  whereas  his 
greatness  gives  him  a  commanding  universality 
and  a  leadership  not  only  modern  but  so  very  far  in 
advance  of  modernity,  as  to  put  modernity  to 
shame. 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


THE  NAZARENE 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 

THE  NAZARENE 

I 

A  YOUNG  rabbi,  early  in  the  First  Century,  A.D., 
announced  that,  after  his  death  but  before  the 
generation  then  living  had  passed  away,  he  would 
come  in  the  clouds  with  power  and  great  glory 
and  send  forth  his  angels  with  a  great  sound  of  a 
trumpet  to  gather  his  elect  from  the  four  winds. 
Sun  and  moon  were  to  be  darkened,  and  the  stars 
to  fall  from  heaven. 

Even  when  haled  before  the  high  priest  for 
examination,  he  declared  that  he  would  one  day 
be  seen  sitting  on  the  right  hand  of  power  and 
coming  on  the  clouds  of  heaven. 

As  to  the  exact  time,  he  was  reticent,  though  he 
told  his  pupils  that  Jews  standing  before  him 
would  be  still  alive  when  he  returned  to  judge  the 
world. 


2 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


All  four  of  his  biographers  credit  him  with  such 
utterances.  They  re-echo  in  the  letters  from  propa¬ 
gandists  to  early  coteries  of  believers.  He  was  to 
descend  from  heaven  with  a  shout,  with  the  voice 
of  an  archangel,  and  with  the  trump  of  God.  The 
time  was  near.  The  end  of  all  things  was  at  hand. 
A  letter  to  Timothy  implies  that  Timothy  himself 
would  live  to  witness  the  event. 

Theologians  pass  lightly  over  all  this.  Critics 
assume  as  lightly  that  belief  in  the  young  rabbi’s 
second  coming  developed  only  after  his  martyrdom 
and  was  then  unwarrantably  attributed  to  him. 
Whereas  the  idea  was  old  and  essential  to  Messiah- 
ship.  A  prophet  long  venerated  by  the  Jews  had 
predicted  that  one  like  unto  a  son  of  man  would 
come  with  the  clouds;  that  dominion  and  glory 
and  a  kingdom  would  be  given  him ;  and  that  all  the 
peoples,  nations,  and  languages  would  serve  him. 
This  son  of  man  the  young  rabbi  claimed  to  be. 

It  was  not  only  the  most  astounding  claim  ever 
made,  and  a  claim  left  unfulfilled  when  the  time 
set  by  the  young  rabbi  had  expired;  it  embodied 
a  conception  that  explains  why  he  died  without 
ever  having  attempted  to  found  a  new  religion, 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


3 


why  he  declined  to  deal  with  social  questions,  even 
the  most  urgent,  and  why  he  never  committed  his 
philosophy  to  writing.  He  was  coming  back  soon 
to  sit  on  the  throne  of  his  glory  and  judge  all  na¬ 
tions.  His  immediate  aim,  therefore,  was  to  warn 
as  many  individuals  as  he  could,  and,  by  teaching 
a  new  and  beautiful  way  of  life,  incomparably 
nobler  than  any  then  aspired  to,  show  them  how 
they  might  escape  retribution.  He  went  about  it 
on  foot. 

Profoundly  read  in  Jewish  literature,  though 
profoundly  uncritical  in  his  interpretation,  he  be¬ 
lieved  also  that  he  must  seek  a  martyr’s  death.  For 
the  prophets,  when  declaring  that  the  cleansing 
wrath  of  God  was  to  descend  upon  a  single  genera¬ 
tion,  had  personified  that  generation  as  the  servant 
of  God,  whose  sufferings  would  atone  for  the  sins 
of  past  generations  and  assure  the  felicity  of  gen¬ 
erations  yet  to  come.  The  figurative  servant  of 
God  would  then  be  bruised  for  our  transgressions, 
that  by  his  stripes  we  might  be  healed. 

Taking  this  literally,  and  confusing  it  with  the 
idea  of  Messiahship,  the  young  rabbi  applied  it  to 
himself.  Hence  his  plan,  announced  to  his  pupils 


4 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


on  more  than  one  occasion,  of  eventually  going  up 
to  Jerusalem,  where  by  affronting  the  ecclesiasti¬ 
cal  grandees  to  make  sure  of  their  hostility  and  by 
permitting  himself  to  be  hailed  as  king  of  the 
Jews  to  make  sure  of  hostility  among  department¬ 
al  chieftains  representing  the  Roman  colonial  of¬ 
fice,  the  desired  martyrdom  was  obtained. 

This  sounds  like  obsession.  It  was  not.  It  was 
religious  genius  manifesting  itself  in  the  enthusi¬ 
asm  of  a  young  Jewish  scholar.  For  he  had  con¬ 
ceived  a  new  idea  of  God  as  a  power  making  for 
righteousness  and  of  religion  as  the  life  of  God  in 
the  soul  of  man.  No  one  else  in  the  entire  world 
of  Jewish  rabbinism  recognized  any  such  idea. 
It  was  overwhelming,  this  consciousness  of  a  di¬ 
vine  indwelling — a  consciousness  vouchsafed  to 
him  alone.  It  led  him  to  ask,  “Who  am  I — what 
am  I — if  not  indeed  the  Messiah  foretold  in  pro¬ 
phecy?”  The  role  was  prepared.  He  assumed  it. 
To  speak  more  accurately,  it  thrust  itself  upon  him. 

From  that  day  forward  he  fitted  himself  into 
the  prophecy,  and  his  Jewish  scholarship  aided 
him  in  so  doing.  What  the  tendencies  of  that 
scholarship  were  is  to  be  seen  in  the  ease  with 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


5 

which  his  followers,  later  on,  fitted  him  still  fur¬ 
ther  into  prophecy. 

It  was  they  who  had  him  born  in  Bethlehem, 
that  prophecy  might  be  fulfilled,  although  he  was 
a  Nazarene.  It  was  they  who  had  him  born  of  a 
virgin  because  a  virgin  birth  is  foretold  in  an 
ancient  scroll — its  fulfilment  is  related  in  the 
same  scroll,  but  this  was  no  deterrent.  Again,  it 
was  they  who  had  him  carried  into  Egypt  when  a 
babe,  as  a  prophet  had  written  that  out  of  Egypt 
God  would  call  his  son. 

Not  content  with  fitting  him  into  prophecy,  they 
found  in  his  martyrdom  an  analogy  with  the  Jew¬ 
ish  sacrificial  system,  and  provided  angelic  chor¬ 
uses  to  praise  the  Lamb  that  was  slain,  and  evolved 
a  dogma  that  still  retains  a  dignified,  albeit  precari¬ 
ous,  standing  in  theology — the  Atonement. 

Such  phenomena,  though  unimportant  in  and  of 
themselves,  show  how  it  was  possible  for  a  young 
rabbi,  alone  in  his  overwhelming  conception  of 
God  as  a  power  making  for  righteousness  and  of 
religion  as  the  life  of  God  in  the  soul  of  man, 
should  undertake  to  transmute  into  fact  and  deed 
as  well  as  sublime  expectation  his  understanding  of 


6 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


the  Messianic  mission — that  is  to  say,  invite  mar¬ 
tyrdom  in  the  belief  that  beyond  martyrdom  lay  the 
certainty  of  his  second  coming,  not  only  as  the 
judge  of  all  tribes  and  kindreds,  but  as  their  Mes¬ 
sianic  ruler.  The  thing  had  in  it  less  of  self- 
deception  than  of  heroic  self-transfiguration. 

When  once  we  see  where  he  got  the  belief  in  his 
second  coming,  how  naturally  he  accepted  it,  and 
with  what  facility  he  passed  it  on  to  his  followers, 
it  becomes  difficult  to  comprehend  why  critics  re¬ 
fuse  to  acknowledge  that  the  young  rabbi  ever  held 
such  a  belief,  especially  as  refusal  creates  new 
problems,  impossible  of  solution. 

Again,  it  is  difficult  to  comprehend  why  theolo¬ 
gians  treat  the  young  rabbi’s  cardinal  idea  as  some¬ 
thing  to  be 'explained  away.  Here  and  there,  to 
be  sure,  a  stray  sect  still  awaits  its  accomplishment, 
though  the  time  limit  specifically  set  for  that  ac¬ 
complishment  expired  many  centuries  ago  without 
result.  But  the  usual  device  is  to  opine  sophisti- 
cally  that  the  young  rabbi  came  again  on  the  occa¬ 
sion  when,  according  to  legend,  tongues  of  fire 
appeared  upon  the  heads  of  certain  devotees.  Or, 
we  are  told  that  the  young  rabbi  returns  constantly 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


7 


in  the  hearts  of  believers — which  is  true,  figura¬ 
tively.  But  this  is  not  what  he  meant  when  he 
spoke  of  stars  falling,  the  sun  and  moon  darkened, 
angels  thronging,  trumpets  sounding,  and  himself 
descending,  with  a  shout,  to  sit  upon  a  throne, 
judge  the  nations,  and  rule  them — all  this  within 
the  lifetime  of  his  hearers. 

Indeed,  were  not  the  motives  of  theologians 
above  suspicion,  one  might  suppose  that  these  ex¬ 
cellent  gentlemen  had  conspired  to  prevent  our 

i 

beholding  what  manner  of  man  the  young  rabbi 
was  and  to  present  in  his  place  a  fictional  unreality 
whom,  generation  after  generation,  the  bulk  of  our 
race  would  scorn.  For  this  is  what  happens.  A 
mistaken  reverence,  by  covering  up  his  own  clear¬ 
ly  enunciated  beliefs  regarding  himself  and  by 
elaborating  instead  an  incredible  metaphysic  he 
never  taught,  never  accepted,  and  never  so  much 
as  dreamed  of,  has  veiled  from  humanity  the  su¬ 
preme  religious  genius  of  all  time.  It  has  made 
him  what  he  was  not.  It  has  falsified  him,  and  then 
wondered  why  the  world  rejects  Christianity. 

If  the  world  rejects  Christianity,  it  is  because 
Christianity  first  rejected  its  Lord. 


II 


The  young  rabbi  had  a  trade.  He  was  a  car¬ 
penter.  But  it  was  customary  for  rabbis  to  have 
trades;  Saul,  rechristened  Paul,  made  tents.  Car¬ 
pentry  by  no  means  marked  the  man  of  Nazareth 
as  different  from  other  rabbis,  nor,  in  certain  re¬ 
spects,  did  his  teachings.  He  lived  and  died  a 
Jew.  He  had  not  come  to  destroy  the  law  and  the 
prophets,  but  to  fulfil  them.  Nothing  would  have 
astonished  him  more  than  to  hear  that  the  world 
would  one  day  acclaim  him  as  the  founder  of  a  new 
religion. 

He  endorsed  ceremonialism — ate  the  Passover 
on  the  day  of  unleavened  bread,  bade  a  former 
leper  go  show  himself  to  the  priest,  and  sanc¬ 
tioned  the  Jewish  sacrificial  system  by  command¬ 
ing  his  followers  to  offer  gifts  at  the  altar.  To  be 
sure,  he  named  the  condition  under  which  gifts 
were  to  be  made.  If  you  were  offering  a  gift  at  the 

altar  and  there  remembered  that  your  brother  had 

8 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


9 


something  against  you,  you  were  to  leave  your  gift 
before  the  altar  and  go  your  way.  You  must  first 
be  reconciled  to  your  brother  and  then  ofifer  your 
gift.  But  in  the  very  naming  of  this  condition, 
he  implied  that  the  sacrificial  system  was  to  be 
retained. 

Once,  and  once  only,  so  far  as  we  can  learn,  he 
spoke  of  some  day  founding  a  church,  with  Peter 
as  its  cornerstone,  though  the  real  cornerstone  of 
Christianity  was  not  Peter  but  Paul,  and  though 
the  church  the  Nazarene  sought  to  found  was  not 
to  be  outside  the  Jewish  religious  organization,  but 
within  it,  and  a  strange  sort  of  church  even  then — 
that  is,  if  it  could  in  any  sense  of  the  word  be 
called  a  church.  Really,  it  could  not.  Individuals 
were  to  be  rescued  from  narrowness,  from  bigotry, 
from  a  crude  dependence  upon  mere  formalism, 
and  shown  that  God  was  a  power  making  for  right¬ 
eousness  and  that  religion  was  nothing  less  than 
the  life  of  God  in  the  soul  of  man.  In  a  word,  the 
young  rabbi  sought  to  infuse  spirituality  into  a 
Judaism  that  had  never  known  a  high  spirituality 
and  was  moving  further  and  further  away  from 
spirituality  every  day. 


IO 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


There  is  a  profound  spirituality  in  the  old  Jew¬ 
ish  classics  if  you  read  into  them  a  meaning  their 
authors  never  intended.  The  old  Jewish  hymns, 
for  example,  overflow  with  such  phrases  as  “My 
rock  and  my  salvation.”  But  what,  strictly  speak¬ 
ing,  was  salvation,  and  what,  strictly  speaking, 
was  Judaism?  Did  it  present  God  as  a  power 
making  for  righteousness  and  religion  as  the  life 
of  God  in  the  soul  of  man?  Had  it  in  it,  any¬ 
where,  the  beauty,  the  inspiration,  the  moral  gran¬ 
deur  that  could  ever  rightly  have  entitled  the  Old 
Testament  to  be  bound  up  in  the  same  volume  with 
the  New? 

In  brief,  the  Old  Testament  teaches  that  God  is 
a  great  man;  that  he  is  very  fond  of  the  smell  of 
burning  meat;  and  that,  if  you  burn  enough  meat, 
he  will  give  you  length  of  days,  numerous  children, 
excellent  health,  success  over  your  enemies,  pros¬ 
perity  in  business,  and  a  triumphant  career  for 
your  militarized — not  to  say  Prussianized — coun¬ 
try.  He  promises  temporal  rewards  only,  as  death 
ends  all,  and  he  promises  those  rewards  only  to 
Jews.  But  even  these  faithful,  meat-burning  Jews 
must  obey  thousands  of  infinitely  precise  laws 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


ii 


regulating  diet  and  ceremonies  and,  now  and  then, 
morals.  In  so  doing  they  receive  no  help  from  a 
power  making  for  righteousness.  They  are  not 
aided  by  the  life  of  God  in  the  soul  of  man. 

It  is  true  that,  in  these  Jewish  classics,  one  finds 
occasional  gleams  of  what  to-day  we  call  religion; 
yet  in  the  First  Century,  A.D.,  Jewish  thought 
dwelt,  not  upon  those,  but  upon  the  thousands  of 
infinitely  precise  laws.  The  scribes  and  Phari¬ 
sees,  whose  vulgar  literalism  filled  the  man  of 
Nazareth  with  indignation,  were  fast  banishing 
spirituality  and  establishing  in  its  place  a  code  of 
practice  and  observance  that  had  remarkably  little 
to  do  with  morals  and  had  still  less  to  do  with 
religion. 

To  what  lengths  Jewish  literalism  would  go  is 
shown  by  the  minutes  of  certain  rabbinical  discus¬ 
sions  during  this  period.  Was  it  lawful  to  step  on 
a  grain  of  corn  on  the  Sabbath  day?  No,  for 
stepping  on  a  grain  of  corn  is  a  kind  of  threshing, 
and  threshing  is  a  kind  of  work,  and  work  was  for¬ 
bidden  on  the  Sabbath  day.  Again,  was  it  lawful 
to  catch  a  flea  on  the  Sabbath  day?  No,  for  catch¬ 
ing  a  flea  was  a  kind  of  hunting,  and  hunting  was 


12 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


a  kind  of  work.  Still  again,  was  it  lawful  to  eat  on 
Sunday  the  egg  a  hen  had  laid  on  Saturday?  No, 
for  the  hen  had  broken  the  Sabbath. 

A  more  complicated  problem:  Might  a  man 
with  a  wooden  leg  walk  about  on  the  Sabbath,  and, 
if  so,  how  far  might  he  walk?  His  wooden  leg  was 
a  burden,  and  carrying  a  burden  was  a  kind  of 
work.  However,  an  old  chronicle  said  that  when 
the  Jews  were  nomads,  every  Jew  was  required  to 
go  to  the  tabernacle  on  the  Sabbath  day.  As  the 
dimensions  of  the  Jewish  camp  were  known,  and  as 
it  was  known  that  the  sacred  tent  stood  in  the 
middle  of  the  camp,  the  farthest  distance  any  Jew 
had  to  go  could  be  determined.  Find  that  distance, 
and  you  knew  how  far  a  man  with  a  wooden  leg 
could  walk  without  desecrating  Saturday. 

Almost  as  quaint  discussions  broke  out  among 
the  early  Christians  when  they  worried  over  the 
ethics  of  eating  scraps  of  beef  and  mutton  left 
over  from  the  pagan  sacrificial  ceremonies  and  of¬ 
fered  for  sale  at  a  bargain.  Paul,  it  will  be 
remembered,  gently  poked  fun  at  this  ethical 
super-fussiness  among  Christians,  but  told  them 
that,  if  they  were  so  terribly  in  earnest  about  it, 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


13 

themselves,  he  would  eat  no  such  scraps  while  the 
world  stood. 

Among  the  Jews,  however,  literalism  and  ex¬ 
treme  legalism  were  not  merely  making  religion 
absurd,  they  were  supplanting  it.  So  the  man  of 
Nazareth  saw  that  the  first  step  toward  spiritual¬ 
izing  the  religious  life  of  his  time  would  be  to 
assail  literalism  and  extreme  legalism  both  by 
word  and  by  deed.  He  denounced  the  scribes  and 
Pharisees  as  hypocrites,  as  blind  leaders  of  the 
blind,  as  whited  sepulchres,  and  as  false  peda¬ 
gogues,  replacing  God’s  commands  with  the  teach¬ 
ings  of  men.  He  even  broke  their  Sabbath — pur¬ 
posely — and  declared  that  the  Sabbath  was  made 
for  man,  not  man  for  the  Sabbath. 

But  observe.  Against  the  Sabbath  itself,  as 
originally  ordained,  he  brought  no  criticism.  It 
was  made  for  man.  He  would  as  soon  have 
thought  of  criticizing  the  Passover,  or  the  right 
of  priests  to  determine  whether  a  leper  was  cured, 
or  the  duty  of  the  faithful  to  lay  gifts  on  the  altar. 

True,  he  criticized  many  a  passage  in  the  old 
Jewish  classics — the  one  about  an  eye  for  an  eye 
and  a  tooth  for  a  tooth,  for  example — but  seldom 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


14 

more  harshly  than  certain  contributors  to  those 
same  classics  had  criticized  them,  and  toward  the 
Old  Testament  as  a  whole  he  showed  a  reverence 
far  exceeding  its  deserts.  From  it  he  drew  virtu¬ 
ally  his  entire  education.  He  quoted  it  freely, 
though  sometimes  innocently  misinterpreting  it. 
He  had  unlimited  faith  in  its  prophecies,  and  upon 
them  based  his  claim  to  Messiahship. 

He  was  never  in  a  mood  to  overthrow  the  Jewish 
church.  It  was  his  own  church — to  the  last.  He 
was  never  in  a  mood  to  overthrow  any  institution. 
Why  should  he  have  been?  Soon — indeed,  before 
the  generation  then  livinghadpassedaway — theend 
of  all  things  was  to  come, with  stars  falling,  sun  and 
moon  darkened,  angels  thronging,  trumpets  sound¬ 
ing,  and  himself  descending  from  the  clouds  with 
a  shout  and  sitting  upon  the  throne  of  his  glory  to 
judge  all  nations  and  reign  in  Messianic  majesty. 

His  immediate  mission  was  to  warn  the  greatest 
possible  number  of  individuals  and  to  tell  them 
how  unfailingly  the  consciousness  of  a  divine  in¬ 
dwelling  transforms  character,  so  that,  as  if  born 
again,  they  might  be  found  worthy  of  a  place  at  his 
right  hand  when  he  returned. 


Ill 


The  man  from  Nazareth  allowed  his  pupils  to 
call  him  rabbi,  though,  when  speaking  of  himself, 
he  claimed  a  loftier  rank — that  of  prophet. 

However,  he  was  a  new  type  of  prophet,  wholly 
unlike  the  Hebrew  dervishes  who,  from  of  old,  had 
assumed  that,  in  order  to  be  believed,  they  must 
begin  with  incredible  stories  about  their  call  to 
preach. 

Isaiah,  for  instance,  tells  us  he  saw  God,  who  was 
sitting  on  a  throne  in  the  temple,  with  a  number  of 
six-winged  angels  attending  him.  Then  came  a 
great  rumbling  and  much  smoke.  Isaiah  trem¬ 
bled,  for  though  a  man  of  unclean  lips,  he  had 
looked  upon  God.  But  presently  a  six-winged 
angel  flew  to  Isaiah  with  a  live  coal  from  the  altar, 
and  touched  the  coal  to  his  lips.  Then,  when  or¬ 
dered  to  turn  prophet,  Isaiah  no  longer  hesitated. 

Jeremiah  in  his  turn  saw  God,  and  God’s  very 

hand  touched  his  lips,  but  of  all  the  prophets  Eze- 

is 


i6 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


kiel  enjoyed  by  far  the  most  spectacular  initiation. 
Out  of  the  north  came  a  fiery  cloud,  and  out  of  the 
cloud  four  extraordinary  creatures,  each  having 
four  wings  and  four  faces — the  face  of  a  man,  the 
face  of  a  lion,  the  face  of  an  ox,  and  the  face  of  an 
eagle.  Meanwhile,  the  candidate  saw  wheels,  and 
wheels  within  wheels,  the  colour  of  beryl  and  full 
of  eyes.  Also  he  beheld  a  crystal  firmament,  and 
there,  seated  on  a  sapphire  throne  and  surrounded 
by  a  rainbow,  was  God.  Ezekiel  fell  on  his  face, 
remaining  in  this  posture  until  he  had  received 
holy  orders. 

In  passing,  we  may  remark  that  there  have  been 
more  plausible  dervishes  than  Ezekiel;  at  least 
once,  the  attentive  reader  will  catch  him  predicting 
an  event  after  its  occurrence. 

But  the  prophet  of  Nazareth  was  no  dervish. 
He  was  no  charlatan.  He  relates  no  story  of  a 
miraculous  call  to  preach,  and,  although  his  biog¬ 
raphers  report  a  very  beautiful  and  romantically 
symbolic  legend  about  the  dove  that  descended 
upon  him  at  his  baptism,  the  symbolism  would 
have  been  more  precise  if  the  dove  had  descended 
upon  him  at  his  birth. 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


i7 


For  he  was  by  nature  a  prophet — that  is  to  say, 
a  prophet  in  the  derivative  sense  of  the  word:  one 
who  speaks  for  God.  The  old  Hebrew  dervishes 
prefaced  their  utterances  with  the  formula,  “Thus 
saith  the  Lord.”  The  prophet  of  Nazareth  pref¬ 
aced  his  with  the  formula,  “Verily,  verily  I  say 
unto  you.”  It  was  not  egotism.  It  expressed  his 
profound  consciousness  of  the  divine  indwelling — 
a  consciousness  no  other  religious  teacher  of  his 
day  possessed  and,  therefore,  a  consciousness  that 
forbade  him  ever  to  doubt  for  one  moment  his 
right  to  command.  He  felt,  just  as  all  supreme 
religious  geniuses  feel,  that  his  own  highest  ideals 
were  identical  with  the  thoughts  of  God  himself. 

Nor  did  he  plunge  into  politics.  The  old-time 
dervishes  set  up  as  political  advisers,  and  took  the 
place  of  statesmen-journalists.  They  were  thun- 
derers.  They  fulminated  against  this  or  that  pro¬ 
posed  alliance,  pictured  the  horrors  of  threatened 
invasion,  and,  sometimes  addressing  the  general 
public  and  sometimes  memorializing  the  throne, 
endeavoured  to  run  the  country.  Not  infrequently 
they  succeeded. 

On  at  least  one  occasion  the  prophet  of  Nazareth 


18  THE  MAN  HIMSELF 

was  asked  to  give  his  views  on  matters  political. 
Ought,  or  ought  not,  the  Jews  to  recognize  the 
Roman  occupation  by  paying  taxes?  Seriously, 
might  it  not  be  nobler  to  go  in  for  passive  resist¬ 
ance? 

Any  one  can  guess  what  Isaiah  would  have  re¬ 
plied — or  Jeremiah,  or  Ezekiel.  But  the  man  of 
Nazareth  told  them  to  render  unto  Caesar  that 
which  was  Caesar’s — in  short,  to  pay — and  changed 
the  subject. 

He  was  no  patriot.  Though  his  biographers 
call  him  a  descendant  of  King  David  (the  same 
biographers  who  deny  that  he  had  a  human  father 
trace  his  genealogy  on  his  human  father’s  side)  he 
acquiesced  calmly  in  the  degradation  of  King 
David’s  former  realm.  Without  the  smallest 
scruple  he  consorted  with  tax-gatherers  in  the  hire 
of  the  Roman  colonial  office,  and  one  of  these 
publicans  figures  illustriously  in  a  parable  of  his. 

What  matter  if  Palestine  writhed  beneath  the 
heel  of  Imperial  Rome?  Soon  there  would  be  no 
longer  a  Palestine  and  no  longer  an  Imperial 
Rome.  The  end  of  all  things  was  at  hand.  So  why 
concern  one’s  self  about  patriotism  and  tributes 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


i9 


and  publicans — mere  transitory  questions  not 
worth  considering?  The  only  thing  really  worth 
considering  was,  how  to  prepare  individuals  to 
escape  condemnation  at  his  hands  when  the  time 
arrived  for  his  second  coming  as  the  world’s  judge 
and  Messianic  ruler.  These  strangers  he  met  by 
the  wayside  or  addressed  on  hilltops  or  on  the 
shores  of  lakes — behold,  they  were  the  same 
strangers  whose  eternal  destiny  he  must  decide. 
To  warn  them,  to  teach  them,  to  show  them  God  as 
a  power  making  for  righteousness  and  religion  as 
the  life  of  God  in  the  soul  of  man,  and  thus  to 
transform  their  characters — this  was  his  sole  aim 
and  purpose.  How  could  he  tramp  far  enough 
over  painful  roads?  How  could  he  spend  himself 
more  completely  in  that  most  exhausting  work,  the 
work  of  preaching? 

The  old  Hebrew  dervishes  never  toiled  in  that 
style.  They  wrote.  It  was  their  readers  who 
toiled.  Whole  passages  in  the  prophets  burn  with 
poetic  inspiration;  other  whole  passages,  not  a  few, 
rise  above  mediocrity;  but  in  the  main,  what 
dreariness,  what  prolixity,  what  repetition!  The 
prophet  of  Nazareth  wrote  nothing.  No  one  pre- 


20 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


tends  that  he  wrote.  Sayings  of  his  were  written 
down  by  no  one  knows  whom — and  the  book  per¬ 
ished.  A  part  of  the  sayings — how  iarge  a  part 
it  is  impossible  to  guess — got  copied  into  his 
biographies  later  on.  But  he,  himself,  depended 
entirely  upon  his  preaching— his  own,  and  that 
of  mendicant  friars  whom  he  had  trained  to 
preach. 

Just  this  failure  to  leave  behind  him  a  personal 
memoir  and  a  personal  statement  of  belief  duly 
signed  has  placed  his  biography  at  the  mercy  of 
fantastic  legend-mongers,  subjected  his  teaching 
to  misinterpretation,  and  bred  strifes  innumerable 
among  his  followers.  It  has  enabled  theologians 
to  make  him  a  god — so  incredible  a  god  that  the 
world  in  general  has  always  refused  to  believe.  It 
has  enabled  ecclesiasticism  to  erect  quasi-imperial 
systems  whose  sway  entailed  wars  without  number. 
It  has  split  his  followers  into  hundreds  of  incom¬ 
patible  sects.  It  has  garbled  his  teachings  until 
minutiae  are  paramount  and  fundamentals  lost 
sight  of.  It  has  rendered  possible  a  world-wide 
misunderstanding  of  the  man  himself — who  he 
was,  what  he  was,  and  the  meaning  of  his  superb 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


21 


idealism.  All  this  a  mere  pamphlet  from  his  pen 
would  have  prevented. 

Why  did  he  never  write  one?  Simply  because 
he  was  unable  to  foresee  that  the  world  would  last 
long  enough  to  need  it.  He  was  going  up  to  Jeru¬ 
salem,  soon,  to  invite  martyrdom.  Not  long  after 
his  death  he  was  to  return.  That  he  was  founding 
a  new  religion  that  would  go  on,  indefinitely, 
evolving  strange  theologies,  building  cathedrals, 
forming  vast  organizations,  and  reconstructing  so¬ 
ciety,  never  occurred  to  him.  The  end  of  all  things 
was  at  hand. 

Only  by  taking  seriously  his  belief  in  his  second 
coming — the  belief  he  got  from  the  old  Jewish 
classics  and  bequeathed  to  his  own  pupils  and  in 
turn  to  theirs — can  we  determine  what  manner  of 
man  he  was.  He  held  that  belief  with  entire  con¬ 
viction.  It  was  his  central  idea.  All  his  other 
ideas  radiated  from  it.  That  it  was  never  realized, 
is  immaterial.  It  gave  him  his  mission,  and,  little 
though  he  suspected  it,  his  mission  is  important 
beyond  anything  the  Messiahship  ever  so  much  as 
suggested. 


IV 


PROPHETS  had  always  been  self-appointed — up¬ 
start  laymen  assuming  to  speak  for  God— and 
dependent  on  signs  and  wonders  to  draw  and  im¬ 
press  a  crowd.  The  queerer  the  signs  and  wonders, 
the  bigger  and  more  credulous  was  the  following 
a  prophet  secured.  Isaiah  went  naked  three  years. 
Hosea  married  a  prostitute.  John  the  Baptist  wore 
an  outlandish  costume  and  subsisted  upon  an  even 
more  outlandish  diet. 

According  to  legend,  the  prophet  of  Nazareth 
set  up  as  a  magician,  turning  water  into  wine,  still¬ 
ing  tempests,  walking  on  the  sea,  and  feeding  mul¬ 
titudes  so  lavishly  with  next  to  nothing  at  all  that 
it  was  a  struggle  to  gather  up  the  leavings.  The¬ 
ology  has  seen  in  these  legends  a  proof  that  he  was 
a  god,  though  very  much  more  astonishing  legends 
cluster  about  the  entirely  human  Jewish  dervishes, 
one  of  whom  caused  the  sun  to  stand  still. 

No  such  magical  performances  were  attempted 


22 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


23 


by  the  Nazarene.  Instead,  he  drew  and  impressed 
the  crowd  by  exercising  a  gift  we  are  at  last  coming 
to  understand — the  gift,  that  is  to  say,  of  healing. 
He  was  a  psychotherapist. 

Like  other  Jews  of  his  day  he  held  quaint  notions 
about  disease.  For  example,  he  thought  that  luna¬ 
tics  were  infested  with  demons.  But  the  technique 
he  employed  in  treating  disease  was  curiously  mod¬ 
ern — in  fact,  ultra-modern  and  resembling  the 
kind  of  thing  we  call  “advanced.” 

It  required  absolute  faith  on  the  practitioner’s 
part,  and  as  absolute  a  faith  on  the  patient’s  part. 
Moreover,  it  involved  a  free  use  of  suggestion. 
The  practitioner  would  loudly  rebuke  a  fever.  He 
would  loudly  rebuke  a  mania.  He  would  impress 
the  imagination  through  the  senses  by  touching  a 
patient  or  by  letting  a  patient  touch  the  hem  of  his 
cloak.  Once,  at  least,  he  spat  on  the  ground  and 
“made  clay”  and  anointed  a  blind  man’s  eyes  with 
the  clay.  And  he  would  not  say,  “You  are  going 
to  get  well,”  he  would  say  “You  are  already 
cured,”  or  imply  it  by  his  sharp  command, 
“Walk!”  He  even  used  absent  treatment;  two 
such  instances  are  recorded. 


24 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


He  claimed  no  monopoly  of  healing.  When  he 
heard  that  a  practitioner  outside  his  school  was 
employing  his  methods  with  good  result,  he  com¬ 
mended  the  outsider,  and  he  took  pains  to  tell  his 
own  pupils  that  they,  too,  could  heal,  and  taught 
them  how. 

Nevertheless,  he  failed  to  recognize  that  his  sys¬ 
tem  of  psychotherapy  operated  within  the  realm 
of  natural  law.  In  his  own  estimation,  he  was 
what  our  newspapers  call  a  “miracle  man,”  and  he 
intended  that  onlookers  should  regard  him  as 
such. 

Immediate  was  their  response.  Here  and  there 
a  sour  fellow  accused  him  of  healing  by  the  aid  of 
some  devil,  even  naming  the  particular  devil,  yet 
the  general  impression  was  that  he  cured  by  the 
direct  intervention  of  Almighty  God,  and  could 
accomplish  anything.  The  reports  drawn  up  by 
his  biographers  not  only  credit  him  with  perform¬ 
ing  cures  wholly  impossible  to  psychotherapy,  but 
assert  that  he  raised  the  dead.  Far  and  wide 
went  his  fame,  until  his  arrival  in  a  town  be¬ 
came  the  signal  for  the  burghers  to  swarm  out 
in  excitement,  bringing  their  sick.  If  Palestine 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


25 


had  possessed  the  modern  system  of  disseminating 
news,  he  would  have  had  the  entire  nation  at  his 
feet. 

How  lasting  were  his  cures?  How  real?  No 
methodical  records  were  kept,  and  for  what  we 
can  learn  of  his  practice  we  are  dependent  upon 
accounts  written  at  least  thirty  years  afterward. 
Yet  the  work  began  early  in  his  public  career  and 
lasted  all  through  it  and  he  was  never  afraid  to  go 
back  into  regions  where  he  had  practised.  Unsuc¬ 
cessful  healers  are  not  so  confident.  But  only 
slight  importance  attaches  to  such  questions  as 
these;  the  really  important  questions  are:  What 
was  the  effect  of  his  practice  upon  his  mission  as 
Messiah?  and,  Why  has  modern  Christianity  per¬ 
sisted,  until  of  late,  in  refusing  to  adopt  and  apply 
his  system? 

It  is  of  course  egregiously  bad  logic  to  argue  that 
just  because  a  man  can  heal  the  sick,  he  is  qualified 
to  teach  spiritual  truth;  but  bad  logic  predomi¬ 
nated  throughout  Palestine  during  the  First  Cen¬ 
tury,  A.D.,  quite  as  it  has  predominated  elsewhere, 
before  and  since,  and  signs  and  wonders  were  not 
only  attractive,  they  were  convincing.  Especially 


26 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


when  they  expressed  a  beautiful  and  godly  benefi¬ 
cence.  This  “miracle  man,”  with  his  amazing 
cures,  must  somehow  have  come  from  God,  people 
said,  and  there  were  onlookers  here  and  there  who, 
simply  by  reason  of  his  success  as  a  healer,  thought 
him  to  be  the  Messiah.  At  the  very  least,  his 
clinics  persuaded  them  that  his  teachings*  about 
God  as  a  power  making  for  righteousness  and 
about  religion  as  the  life  of  God  in  the  soul  of 
man,  must  be  true. 

The  other  question — namely,  as  to  why  modern 
Christianity  has  persisted  until  of  late  in  refusing 
to  adopt  and  apply  his  system — is  more  capable  of 
direct  answer  than  might  at  first  appear.  Theolo¬ 
gy  stood  in  the  way.  Theology,  having  made  him 
a  god,  found  it  difficult  to  accept  its  own  dogma, 
and  ransacked  the  whole  realm  of  misinformation 
concerning  him  for  arguments.  Thus  it  hit  on 
miracles,  innocently  disregarding  the  fact  that  only 
legend  attributes  miracles  to  him.  Thus,  although 
his  cures  were  performed  in  strict  accord  with 
natural  law,  they  were  taken  as  proof  that 
he  himself  was  supernatural — from  which  it 
was  but  a  short  and  easy  step  to  assuming  that 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF  27 

only  a  supernatural  person  could  perform  such 
cures. 

The  early  Christians  thought  differently.  So  ex¬ 
tensive  was  the  practice  of  psychotherapy  among 
them  that  legends  grew  up  to  the  effect  that  they 
could  raise  the  dead,  and  enthusiasts  carried  away 
handkerchiefs  and  bits  of  clothing  a  healer  had 
touched,  believing  that  even  these  would  cure  the 
sick,  while  others  brought  their  sick  on  litters  that 
the  healer’s  shadow  might  fall  upon  them.  As  for 
the  real  clinics,  they  were  practically  the  same  as 
those  of  the  Nazarene.  Healers  insisted  on  impli¬ 
cit  faith.  They  applied  suggestion  through  the 
senses  by  touching  the  patient  or  by  grasping  the 
hand.  They  cried  out  sharply,  “Arise!”  The  only 
innovation  they  introduced  was  prayer. 

These  cures,  though  now  known  to  have  been 
purely  natural,  were  looked  upon  as  miraculous 
by  the  early  Christians  and  by  the  completely  un¬ 
scientific  world  in  which  early  Christianity  was 
fast  spreading.  They  helped  it  to  spread  still 
faster.  As  concrete  propaganda — signs  and  won¬ 
ders — they  made  a  deep  and  lasting  impression, 
and  they  had  the  further  effect  of  bringing  the  be- 


28 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


liever  into  direct  relation,  consciously,  with  his 
Creator.  If  ten  thousand  intimately  exacting  Jew¬ 
ish  laws  had  ceased  to  affect  him  and  if  Christian 
freedom  seemed  to  have  led  him  out  into  a  place 
too  vaguely  spacious,  here  was  something  that 
reached  the  very  fibres  of  his  physical  self. 

But  it  was  principally  for  their  utility  as  signs 
and  wonders  that  the  prophet  of  Nazareth  valued 
his  cures,  and  we  may  well  question  how  far  he 
would  have  got  without  them.  When  he  first  took 
up  the  role  of  Messiahship,  he  met  with  a  cool 
enough  response.  His  family  were  unsympathetic. 
The  neighbours,  there  in  Nazareth,  seemed  any¬ 
thing  but  impressed.  Looking  back  to  that  period, 
later  on,  he  remarked  that  a  prophet  was  not  with¬ 
out  honour  save  in  his  own  country  and  his  own 
house.  Not  until  he  won  distinction  as  a  brilli¬ 
antly  successful  psychotherapist  were  his  claims 
to  the  Messiahship  taken  seriously. 

He  used  psychotherapy  as  a  means  to  an  end, 
never  as  an  end  in  itself.  He  was  not  one  of  those 
who  think  health  the  chief  business  of  life  and 
make  a  religion  of  it.  What  was  health  for  a 
few  years  at  most  beside  the  issues  of  Messianic 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


29 


judgment?  If  he  delighted  to  heal  men’s  bodies, 
what  inspired  him  with  a  far  more  consuming 
zeal  was  his  desire  to  prepare  them  for  the  day 
of  his  second  coming,  when  he,  sitting  upon  his 
throne,  would  decide  their  eternal  destiny. 


V 


Legend  would  persuade  us  that  the  boy  who 
grew  up  in  Nazareth  was  a  rather  troublesome 
child  of  rather  careless  parents.  Returning  from  a 
trip  to  Jerusalem,  they  travelled  an  entire  day 
without  noticing  that  the  boy  was  not  with  them. 
He  had  slipped  away  by  himself,  heedless  of  their 
possible  anxieties,  and  was  found  in  the  temple, 
where,  though  only  twelve,  he  astonished  the  doc¬ 
tors  of  divinity  with  his  erudition. 

Beyond  his  legend  and  his  own  remarks  that 
prophets  are  apt  to  make  an  unfortunate  impres¬ 
sion  on  their  kinsfolk,  we  know  nothing  of  his 
home  life.  Indeed,  we  know  nothing  at  all  signi¬ 
ficant  about  him — except  that  he  learned  carpen¬ 
try,  studied  the  Jewish  classics  and  had  a  cousin 
who  took  to  prophesying — until  the  day  when  he 
himself  adopted  that  profession.  In  other  words, 
the  first  thirty  years  of  his  career  are  virtually  a 
blank;  he  died  at  thirty-three. 


30 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


3i 


H  owever,  we  find  among  his  recorded  utterances 
several  that  show  his  attitude  toward  family  life. 
It  was  an  attitude  that  still  perplexes  those  who 
say  his  belief  in  his  second  coming  is  to  be  disre¬ 
garded.  Quite  calmly  he  could  announce  that  his 
teachings  would  divide  families — father  against 
son  and  son  against  father,  mother  against  daugh¬ 
ter  and  daughter  against  mother.  As  calmly  he 
declared  that  no  one  could  be  a  worthy  pupil  of 
his  who  was  unwilling  to  renounce  family  affection 
altogether. 

Every  great  religious  genuis,  in  attempting  to 
gain  adherents,  has  seen  that  new  doctrine  griev¬ 
ously  offends  traditionalists  and  that  beneath  the 
same  roof,  not  infrequently,  convictions  clash,  to 
the  ruin  of  domestic  peace.  But  few  harbingers 
of  spiritual  illumination  have  been  represented  by 
their  biographers  as  being  so  indifferent  to  such 
consequences  as  was  this  young  rabbi. 

The  family  interested  him  not.  Though  he  was 
no  misogynist  and  could  develop  warm  friend¬ 
ships  with  women,  he  never  married.  When  told 
that  his  mother  and  his  brothers  were  waiting  to 
see  him,  he  remarked  that  any  obedient  pupil  had 


32 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


as  strong  a  hold  upon  his  regard.  When  an  en¬ 
thusiastic  woman  called  down  blessings  upon  his 
mother,  he  said  that  calling  down  blessings  upon 
his  followers  would  be  more  reasonable.  It  is 
even  recorded  that,  speaking  with  his  mother  face 
to  face,  he  said,  “Woman,  what  have  I  to  do  with 
thee?” 

H  is  pupils  shared  his  ideas  as  to  the  relative 
unimportance  of  family  life,  and  passed  them  on. 
Early  bishops  and  early  deacons  were  selected 
from  among  married  men,  it  is  true,  but  the  re¬ 
quirement  was  based  upon  prudential  considera¬ 
tions  only.  The  early  church  never  idealized 
marriage.  At  best  it  merely  condoned  or  defended 
it.  Early  dogmatists  looked  upon  marriage  as  the 
lesser  of  two  evils — a  concession  to  human  frailty; 
people  unable  to  remain  moral  unless  wedded 
were  better  wedded  than  single;  people  of  firm 
character  and  controllable  impulse  were  advised 
not  to  marry.  Paul,  a  bachelor,  urged  other  bache¬ 
lors  to  stay  so.  At  heart  he  was  a  Shaker. 

In  the  case  of  a  Messiah,  of  course,  marriage 
would  have  been  reprehensible;  for  Messiahship 
was  not  only  dangerous  but  downright  suicidal— 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


33 


at  all  events  the  Messiahship  assumed  by  the  man 
of  Nazareth  was.  As  he  understood  it,  the  servant 
of  God — that  personification  of  the  one  generation 
on  which  was  to  fall  the  cleansing  wrath  of  God, 
avenging  the  sins  of  the  dead  and  assuring  the 
future  prosperity  of  the  nation — was  identical  with 
the  Messiah  who  would  afterward  leap  from  the 
sky  in  glory.  No  man,  clearly  foreseeing  martyr¬ 
dom  and  knowing  that  it  is  not  far  off,  will  marry. 

But  what  excuse  was  this  for  his  discrediting 
family  affection  altogether?  Only  by  taking  seri¬ 
ously  those  utterances  of  his  about  a  second  com¬ 
ing,  as  Messiahship  judge  and  ruler,  can  we  under¬ 
stand  why  he  regarded  family  affection  as  of  so 
slight  importance.  It  was  because  the  end  of  all 
things  was  at  hand.  In  a  few  more  years,  all  hu¬ 
man  institutions,  the  family  included,  would  be 
swept  away,  along  with  the  very  stars  of  heaven. 

That,  in  its  turn,  explains  why  there  went  up  an 
outcry  from  early  Christians  against  marriage — 
from  Paul  especially.  The  day  of  the  second 
coming  was  near,  argued  Paul,  and  those  who  had 
wives  would  soon  be  no  better  off  than  those  who 
had  not.  Then  why  marry?  Why  indeed? 


34 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


But  it  is  noteworthy  that  the  man  of  Nazareth 
never  sought  to  forbid  marriage.  Not  one  of  his 
recorded  utterances  can  be  so  construed  as  to  make 
it  appear  that  he  did.  Others,  many  others,  show 
that  he  had  no  such  intention.  In  his  capacity  as 
a  Messianic  law-giver,  he  pronounced  marriage 
an  institution  divinely  ordained,  put  the  seal  of  his 
authority  upon  the  old  Jewish  statute  requiring 
children  to  honour  their  parents,  and  denounced 
the  subterfuges  by  which  Jewish  legalism  had  vio¬ 
lated  its  spirit.  Also  he  dealt  harshly  with  divorce 
and  the  remarriage  of  divorced  people,  and  not 
only  with  adultery  but  with  the  mental  licentious¬ 
ness  that  is  tantamount  thereto. 

Yet  what  interested  him  was  not  marriage  and 
the  family,  it  was  the  individuals  involved.  Mar¬ 
riage  and  the  family  would  pass  away.  The  indi¬ 
viduals  would  not ;  they  were  immortal ;  and  by  the 
same  token  there  was  a  consideration  more  import¬ 
ant  than  any  presented  by  marriage  and  the  family. 
If  family  ties,  merely  temporal  at  best,  restrained 
individuals  from  accepting  the  spiritualized  and  at 
once  revivified  and  revivifying  Judaism  he  strove 
to  teach,  then  family  ties  must  yield. 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


35 


This  demand  upon  his  pupils  for  an  undivided 
allegiance  was  necessary.  In  a  world  bitterly  hos¬ 
tile,  only  extreme  devotion  could  avail.  He  want¬ 
ed  complete  zealots  for  his  propagandists  and 
complete  zealots  who  could  prove  their  devotion 
by  a  readiness  to  sacrifice  every  other  interest. 
How  well  he  understood  how  to  secure  them!  A 
strange  thing  is  this  trait  we  call  devotion.  Ask 
of  it  little,  and  you  get  less  than  that  little.  Ask 
all,  and  it  regrets  only  that  it  is  unable  to  give 
more  than  all. 

He  set  his  pupils  an  example,  though  with  evi¬ 
dent  difficulty  when  it  came  to  making  a  show  of 
discounting  family  ties  in  his  own  case.  Those 
brusque,  unfilial  words  of  his  to  the  Jewess  who 
bore  him  have  no  ring  of  sincerity,  and  neither  do 
his  attempts  to  have  it  appear  that  he  cared  no 
more  for  his  mother  and  his  brothers  than  for  his 
obedient  pupils. 

For  centuries,  theology  has  wondered  what  he 
meant;  whereas,  the  truth  is,  he  was  forcing  the 
note — doing  on  principle,  and  because  he  was  cor¬ 
nered  into  it  by  his  demand  upon  others,  a  thing  he 
hated  to  do  and  might  more  wisely  have  avoided. 


36  THE  MAN  HIMSELF 

There  is  no  irreverence  in  admitting  this,  any 
more  than  there  is  irreverence  in  admitting  that  a 
fallacious  type  of  Jewish  scholarship  led  him  to 
identify  the  suffering  “servant  of  God”  with  the 
Messiah  and  to  identify  himself  with  both.  He 
could  make  mistakes.  He  was  mistaken  about  his 
second  coming,  and  he  made  a  glaring  mistake 
when  he  announced  that  it  was  to  occur  within  the 
lifetime  of  certain  among  his  hearers.  To  recog¬ 
nize  his  mistakes  is  to  undermine  theology;  but 
then,  is  it  not  high  time  we  set  about  undermining 
a  theology  that,  in  the  name  of  reverence,  disre¬ 
gards  his  clearly  enunciated  ideas  about  himself, 
and,  by  so  doing,  gives  us  another  person  entirely? 
That  is  not  reverence.  Nor  is  it  good  tactics.  The 
other  person  thus  presented  for  our  acceptance 
fails  to  win  it,  and  there  is  an  excellent  reason 
why  he  should  fail ;  for,  in  order  to  win  acceptance 
it  is  first  necessary  to  exist. 


VI 


Because  he  was  a  carpenter,  and  because  his 
followers  came  in  course  of  time  to  accept  some¬ 
thing  like  the  soviet  idea  of  property,  selling  their 
lands,  houses  and  goods,  dividing  as  any  man  had 
need,  and  jeering  at  the  rich,  there  are  those  who 
argue  that  the  prophet  who  arose  in  Nazareth  was 
a  champion  of  Labour  against  Capital.  Some 
even  call  him  the  first  of  the  Socialists.  He  was 
neither. 

And  yet  he  held  manifestly  unpractical  notions 
about  property.  It  was  foolish  to  lay  up  treasure. 
Moth  and  rust  would  consume  it;  thieves  would 
break  through  and  steal.  If  you  argued  that  you 
were  making  provision  for  the  future,  he  advised 
you  to  let  the  future  provide  for  itself;  birds  and 
flowers  were  not  anxious;  why  should  you  be? 
H  ave  faith. 

But  laying  up  treasure  was  worse  than  foolish, 
it  was  harmful,  for  it  led  to  ungodliness,  as  no  one 


37 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


38 

could  serve  God  and  Mammon,  and  only  with  the 
utmost  difficulty  could  a  rich  man  enter  into  the 
Kingdom  of  Heaven.  One  enormously  rich  man 
was  told  to  sell  everything  he  owned  and  give 
away  the  money  in  indiscriminate  charity.  The 
now  obvious  unwisdom  of  indiscriminate  giving 
went  unnoticed.  You  were  to  give  to  anybody  who 
asked. 

In  practice  these  curious  economic  doctrines 
would  soon  have  annihilated  Capital,  it  is  true; 
but  they  were  not  propounded  to  capitalists  alone, 
they  were  meant  for  universal  application;  and 
when  doctrinaires  attempt  to  portray  the  Nazarene 
as  a  champion  of  Labour  against  Capital  there  are 
serious  obstacles,  chief  of  which  is  his  failure  to 
show  the  slightest  interest  in  the  Labour  question, 
though  in  his  day  it  presented  itself  in  a  peculiarly 
harrowing  form — the  form,  that  is  to  say,  of  slav¬ 
ery.  Not  a  single  protest  against  slavery  has  he 
left  us.  No,  nor  a  single  comment  to  show  that  it 
interested  him. 

Albeit  mildly,  it  interested  his  followers,  and 
some  of  them,  in  letters  to  the  faithful,  advised  gen¬ 
tleness  on  the  slave-holders’  part,  while  slaves  were 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


39 


to  obey  their  masters  with  fear  and  trembling  in 
singleness  of  heart.  They  sought  to  mitigate  the 
horror  of  slavery,  but  never  aimed  at  its  abolition. 

It  was  in  this  spirit  precisely  that  the  man  who 
has  been  called  the  first  of  the  Socialists  ap¬ 
proached  the  problem  of  poverty.  Individual 
cases  were  to  be  relieved  as  rapidly  as  might  be, 
but  a  chance  remark  of  his  that  the  poor  we  have 
always  with  us,  has  been  interpreted  through  the 
ages  as  meaning  that  the  poor  we  must  have  always 
with  us.  He  had  an  opportunity  to  forestall  such 
misinterpretation,  but  he  let  that  opportunity  go 
by.  He  never  traced  poverty  to  its  causes  nor  de¬ 
vised  projects  looking  to  its  final  and  complete 
eradication.  He  was  no  economist.  No  more  than 
other  Jews  of  his  day  was  he  a  sociologist. 

During  his  public  career  he  stood  aloof  from  the 
ordered  realm  of  economics,  himself.  He  owned 
nothing  save  the  garments  he  wore.  He  never 
worked  at  his  trade.  At  intervals,  Paul  went  back 
to  tent-making,  but  this  wanderer  in  Galilee  is  not 
represented  by  his  biographers  as  ever  going  back 
to  carpentry.  He  depended  on  charity  for  food, 
shelter,  and  such  doles  of  money  as  found  their 


40 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


way  into  the  purse  carried  by  his  ill-chosen  treas¬ 
urer — one  Judas. 

To  be  sure,  he  looked  upon  himself  as  giving  in 
return  a  service  out  of  all  proportion  to  the  favours 
he  accepted.  When  he  commissioned  seventy 
mendicant  friars  at  once,  sending  them  out  unsup¬ 
plied  and  unfinanced  to  live  on  the  country  as  best 
they  might,  he  told  them  that  the  labourer  was  wor¬ 
thy  of  his  hire.  So  in  his  own  case.  And  yet  it 
made  him  anything  but  a  suitable  figure  for  Soci¬ 
alists  to  point  out  as  the  first  of  their  kind.  Nor  do 
we  find  anywhere  among  his  recorded  teachings 
so  much  as  a  single  precept  bearing  upon  the  virtue 
that  must  underlie  all  economic  systems,  Socialis¬ 
tic  or  otherwise— namely,  industry.  The  old  Jew¬ 
ish  classics  contain  many  such  precepts.  The 
anthology  of  Jewish  proverbs  teems  with  them. 
Instead  of  adding  to  that  mass  of  exhortations  be¬ 
lauding  industry,  this  “first  of  all  the  Socialists” 
overlooks  the  subject  altogether. 

Despite  his  concentration  upon  the  individual 
throughout  his  teachings  and  despite  his  disregard 
for  all  social  problems,  we  now  and  then  hear  that 
he  sought  to  introduce  into  our  chaotic  and  mis- 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


4i 


guided  world  a  new  order  of  society.  Nothing  was 
further  from  his  intention.  The  theory,  however, 
is  natural  enough,  for  he  talked  constantly  of  a 
Kingdom  of  heaven — or  of  God — and  used  terms 
so  loosely  that  an  uncritical  reading  of  his  aphor¬ 
isms  leads  easily  to  misinterpretation  of  them. 

This  Kingdom  he  talked  about — what,  really, 
did  he  mean  by  it?  Various  things.  Different 
things  at  different  times.  Sometimes  he  meant  the 
as  yet  unorganized  but  rapidly  increasing  company 
of  his  followers.  What  had  at  first  looked  like  a 
mere  grain  of  mustard  seed  was  becoming  a  tree. 
And  his  followers  were  not  to  be  too  wary  in  their 
attitude  toward  applicants  for  admission  to  their 
ranks.  Tares  would  appear  among  the  wheat. 
So  be  it;  later  on,  it  would  be  necessary  to  weed 
them  out,  but  that  could  wait.  The  net  would 
bring  up  evil  fish  along  with  the  good  ones,  yet  the 
fish  were  not  to  be  sorted  until  the  end  of  the  world. 
Thus  the  Kingdom  of  heaven — or  of  God — was 
‘Tike  unto”  a  grain  of  mustard  seed,  ‘dike  unto”  a 
man  in  whose  field  an  enemy  sowed  tares,  and  “like 
unto”  a  net. 

At  other  times  he  told  his  pupils  that  the  King- 


42 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


dom  was  within  them,  meaning  a  power  making 
for  righteousness,  a  divine  indwelling,  the  life  of 
God  in  the  soul  of  man.  Once  let  it  enter,  and  its 
influence  would  grow  until  it  controlled  the  whole 
man.  It  was  “like  unto”  yeast  in  a  loaf;  and  it 
was  so  precious  a  thing  that  it  was  “like  unto”  a 
treasure  hid  in  a  field  or  “like  unto”  a  pearl  of 
great  price.  To  obtain  that  field  or  that  pearl,  a 
man  would  sell  all  his  possessions. 

At  still  other  times  the  Kingdom  he  spoke  of 
was  the  Messianic  Kingdom — his  own  triumphant 
reign  in  glory,  a  kingdom  not  of  this  world.  One 
of  his  announcements  of  his  second  coming  de¬ 
clared  that  he  would  be  seen  coming  in  his  king¬ 
dom,  and  in  a  famous  parable  of  his  about  the  Ten 
Virgins,  he  refers  directly  to  himself  as  the  bride¬ 
groom  whose  coming  his  followers  were  to  await. 
The  parable  begins  with  the  words,  “Then  shall 
the  Kingdom  of  heaven  be  likened  unto,”  and  ends 
with  the  words,  “Watch,  therefore,  for  ye  know 
not  the  day  nor  the  hour.” 

Here,  then,  are  the  three  different  senses  in 
which  he  used  the  term  Kingdom  of  heaven— or  of 
God — and  not  one  of  the  three  even  suggests  that 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


43 


he  sought  to  introduce  into  our  chaotic  and  mis¬ 
guided  world  a  new  order  of  society,  while  the  last 
of  the  three  shows  why  such  a  project  was  entirely 
outside  his  range  of  thought.  Moreover,  it  shows 
why  he  refused  to  become  the  champion  of  Labour 
against  Capital,  why  he  failed  to  attack  slavery, 
why  he  never  traced  poverty  to  its  causes  or  inter¬ 
ested  himself  in  projects  looking  to  its  final  and 
complete  eradication,  why  he  never  ranked  industry 
among  the  major  virtues,  and  why  he  could  teach 
economic  theories  which  in  practice  would  wreck 
any  imaginable  or  unimaginable  economic  system 
within  an  appallingly  brief  space. 

Close  at  hand  was  the  time  when  he  would  be 
seen  coming  in  his  kingdom,  and  the  supreme  duty 
of  the  individual  was  to  watch,  as  no  one  knew  the 
day  nor  the  hour.  Economic  systems,  industrial 
systems,  governmental  systems,  social  systems — 
how  unimportant  they  appeared  in  the  light  of  his 
second  coming!  All  existing  systems  would  then 
perish.  During  the  short  period  that  intervened, 
they  interested  him  not.  Only  individuals  did. 


VII 


A  BEAUTIFUL  story,  so  beautiful  that  we  might 

• 

almost  call  it  a  poem,  relates  that  one  night  in 
Palestine  the  shepherds,  while  watching  their 
flocks,  suddenly  beheld  the  sky  filled  with  angels, 
who  sang,  “Glory  to  God  in  the  highest  and  on 
earth  peace!” 

This  story,  not  less  than  the  epithet  Prince  of 
Peace,  bestowed  upon  him  after  his  death,  has 
spread  far  the  belief  that  the  prophet  of  Nazareth 
was  a  pacifist 

Such  he  might  well  have  been;  for  he  not  only 
forbade  men  to  kill  but  commended  them  to  love 
their  enemies  and  pray  for  those  who  despitefullv 
used  them.  Smitten  on  one  cheek,  they  were  to 
turn  the  other  also.  He  told  them  never  to  resist 
evil ;  instead,  they  must  requite  evil  with  good. 
In  the  most  famous  of  his  public  addresses  he  said 
that  the  peacemakers  were  blessed. 

It  is  noticeable,  however,  that  in  all  these  in- 


44 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


45 


stances  he  was  speaking  of  relations  between  man 
and  man,  just  as  he  was  when  he  said  he  had  come, 
not  to  bring  peace,  but  to  bring  a  sword,  and  went 
on  immediately  to  link  that  remark  with  a  predic¬ 
tion  that  acceptance  of  his  teachings  would  some¬ 
times  disrupt  families.  International  relations 
were  outside  his  province.  So  far  as  can  be  learned, 
he  touched  upon  that  subject  only  once,  and  then  in 
rather  a  hopeless,  fatalistic  way,  as  will  appear 
later. 

There  was  no  particular  need  of  a  pacifist  among 
the  Jews  during  the  First  Century,  A.D.  They 
were  anything  but  warlike.  All  the  fight  had  been 
taken  out  of  them  by  Roman  despotism.  But  their 
classics,  destined  to  become  a  part  of  Christen¬ 
dom’s  moral  text-book,  and  to  endure  as  such,  even 
to  this  very  day,  reeked  with  militarism.  It  would 
have  been  a  service  of  incalculable  value  to 
humanity  had  the  young  rabbi  denounced  such 
teachings  as  fearlessly  as  he  denounced  the  eye- 
for-eye-and-tooth-for-tooth  doctrine  in  those  same 
classics. 

Consider.  It  was  recorded  in  old  Jewish  scrolls 
that  God  himself  proclaimed  the  duty  of  unpro- 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


46 

yoked  conquest.  Tribes  of  nomads  were  divinely 
commanded  to  invade  a  region  peopled  by  town- 
dwellers  far  more  civilized  than  themselves.  No 
excuse  is  named  for  this  outrage  save  the  fact  that 
the  land  was  desirable  land,  productive  of  unusu¬ 
ally  large  grapes  and  an  abundance  of  milk  and 
honey,  and  that  the  inhabitants  worshipped  gods 
whom  the  Jews  themselves  could  not  always  be 
restrained  from  worshipping. 

Jewish  classics  describe  with  glee  the  atrocities 
that  enlivened  this  campaign  for  a  place  in  the 
sun,  and  invariably  such  atrocities  are  represented 
as  having  been  committed  in  obedience  to  divine 
command.  It  was  Jehovah  who  delivered  up  the 
conquered  and  who  instigated  wholesale  massacres. 
The  invaders  were  forbidden  to  make  terms. 
They  were  forbidden  to  show  mercy. 

These  orders  were  literally  carried  out  wherever 
possible.  We  read,  for  instance,  that  a  Jewish 
marauder  stormed  Makkedah  and  smote  it  with 
the  edge  of  the  sword  and  the  king  thereof,  where¬ 
upon  he  massacred  the  inhabitants — utterly  de¬ 
stroyed  them  and  left  none  remaining.  That  was 
typical,  except  that,  in  order  to  complete  the  job 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


47 

in  the  usual  way,  he  should  have  burned  Makkedah 
“with  fire.” 

It  is  true  that  this  incursion  of  barbarism  into  a 
civilized  and  peaceful  land  resulted  in  a  rather 
incomplete  conquest.  The  rightful  owners  of  the 
country  were  not  exterminated,  quite,  nor  altogeth¬ 
er  dispossessed.  We  hear  from  the  survivors  later 
on,  when  their  gods  are  always  fascinating  a  mi¬ 
nority  of  the  Jews  and  sometimes  a  majority.  But 
the  point  is  irrelevant.  What  counts  is  the  predom¬ 
inance  of  a  peculiarly  savage  militarism  in  the 
Jewish  classics,  where  the  Lord  God  of  Hosts 
is  the  tribal  battle  god — a  divinity  who,  under 
the  name  of  Gott,  was  to  reappear  in  modern 
Prussia. 

The  young  rabbi  who  became  a  strolling  pro¬ 
phet  had  an  opportunity  to  say,  bluntly,  “This  bar¬ 
baric  war  god  in  your  old  Jewish  scrolls  never 
existed.  He  was  a  fiction,  out  and  out,  and  the 
unprovoked  conquest  he  is  said  to  have  directed 
was  a  carnival  of  applied  depravity.  The  Father 
in  Heaven  I  worship  is  another  God  entirely  from 
this  monster  your  ancestors  worshipped.” 

Just  one  sentence  in  that  vein,  had  it  come 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


48 

down  to  us  from  the  man  of  Nazareth,  would  have 
influenced  profoundly  the  mind  of  Christendom. 
It  was  insufficient  merely  to  preach  peace  as  be¬ 
tween  man  and  man,  forbidding  individual  mur¬ 
der,  commanding  men  to  love  their  personal 
enemies  and  requite  a  personal  affront  with  its 
personal  opposite.  Once  a  war  has  broken  out, 
the  very  things  that  rank  as  private  crimes  during 
a  reign  of  peace  instantly  assume  the  rank  of  public 
virtues,  while  many  a  peace-time  virtue  as  instantly 
becomes  a  crime — non-resistance,  for  example, 
may  bring  death  and  destruction  to  one’s  depend¬ 
ents  and  will  at  the  very  least  wipe  out  the  national 
heritage  that  is  their  birthright. 

Among  the  ancient  prophets,  with  whose  writ- 
ings  the  Nazarene  was  familiar,  there  were  a  few 
who  boldly  denounced  war.  He  might  well  have 
quoted  them — in  particular,  the  magnificent  poet- 
statesman  and  philosopher  who  looked  forward  to 
the  time  when  peoples  would  beat  their  swords 
into  plowshares,  when  the  art  of  war  would  cease 
to  be  learned,  and  when  nation  would  no  longer 
rise  up  against  nation.  That  was  specific.  It  ap- 

t  _ 

plied.  He  was  writing,  not  of  personal  affairs, 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


49 

but  of  international  affairs.  He  was  the  supreme 
and  the  first — Prince  of  Peace. 

Fifty  nations,  the  bulk  of  them  Christians,  are 
now  banded  together  in  a  great  league  to  prevent 
war.  Yet  the  Christian  members  of  that  league 
are  unable  to  cite  one  specifically  anti-militaristic 
precept  that  bears  the  stamp  of  the  Nazarene’s 
authority,  while  the  one  specific  mention  of  war  he 
permitted  himself  was  a  mention  of  future  war. 
During  the  period  just  before  his  second  coming, 
nation  would  rise  up  against  nation,  kingdom 
against  kingdom ;  there  would  be  wars  and  rumours 
or  wars.  He  registered  no  protest.  He  never  sug¬ 
gested  that  war  was  preventable.  He  said  of  these 
predicted  wars  that  such  things  must  needs  come  to 
pass. 

And  even  in  his  attitude  toward  violence  be¬ 
tween  man  and  man,  he  could  be  strangely  incon¬ 
sistent.  He  could  command  a  follower  to  put  up 
his  sword,  it  is  true,  but  a  biographer  of  his  was 
convinced  that  on  one  occasion,  when  master  and 
pupils  were  in  great  danger,  he  ordered  swords 
purchased. 

Now  it  would  be  folly  to  argue,  merely  because 


5o  THE  MAN  HIMSELF 

on  a  single  occasion  he  seemed  to  endorse  self  de¬ 
fense,  and  because  he  never  specifically  condemned 
public  war,  and  because  he  looked  upon  an  ap¬ 
proaching  war  as  inevitable,  that  he  would  have 
condoned  war,  had  his  opinion  been  sought.  The 
whole  spirit  of  the  man  forbids  any  such  suspicion, 
and  the  real  reason  for  his  apparent  indifference 
to  the  subject  is  to  be  sought  in  his  belief  that  he 
was  the  Messiah.  As  such,  he  already  had  a  reme¬ 
dy  for  war — namely,  himself.  He  was  coming 
again  to  judge  the  world  and  reign.  There  would 
then  be  a  new  world — the  Kingdom  of  heaven — 
and  no  more  war. 

During  the  years  of  his  prophetic  mission,  he 
had  no  hope  of  reforming  this  world.  It  was  a  bad 
world,  doomed  to  stay  bad.  As  long  as  it  lasted, 
nation  would  rise  against  nation,  kingdom  against 
kingdom;  there  would  be  wars  and  rumours  of 
wars — these  things  must  needs  come  to  pass.  But 
while  he  despaired  of  reforming  human  institu¬ 
tions,  he  had  unlimited  faith  in  the  possibility  of 
reforming  human  beings.  That,  during  the  three 
years  he  tramped  the  highways  of  Palestine  before 
going  up  to  Jerusalem  in  quest  of  martyrdom,  was 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


5i 


his  aim.  He  had  no  other.  In  the  accomplishment 
of  that  one  all-absorbing  purpose,  not  the  grim¬ 
mest  self-sacrifice  was  too  extreme,  nor  the  utmost 
hardship  too  grievous,  if  only  he  could  establish 
within  the  hearts  of  human  beings  the  Kingdom 
of  heaven,  enlarging  daily  the  Godlike  kingdom 
of  his  followers,  and  prepare  them  for  acceptance 
in  the  Kingdom  of  heaven  that  was  to  be  when  this 
present  world  should  pass  away. 


VIII 


The  most  romantic,  perhaps,  of  all  the  stories 
told  to  wondering  children  relates  how  a  party  of 
Orientals  followed  a  moving  star  until  it  stopped 
over  the  house  where  an  infant  prince,  heir  to 
the  Jewish  throne,  lay  wrapped  in  swaddling 
bands.  When  they  came  into  the  house  and  saw 
the  young  child  with  Mary  his  mother  they  fell 
down  and  worshipped  him  and  opening  their 
treasure  they  offered  him  gold,  frankincense,  and 
myrrh. 

But  the  story  includes  no  mention  of  special 
homage  to  the  madonna,  nor  would  Jewish  cus¬ 
toms  have  allowed  it.  The  madonna  was  unclean. 
She  had  still  to  undergo  a  long  process  of  purifica¬ 
tion,  during  which  she  must  not  enter  the  sanctu¬ 
ary  or  touch  any  hallowed  thing.  Had  her  child 
been  a  girl,  the  process  of  purification  would  have 
taken  much  longer. 

This  churching  of  women  was  required  by  the 


52 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


53 


Jewish  code.  Mary,  though  now  called  in  certain 
liturgies  the  holy  mother  of  God,  paid  the  full 
penalty,  enduring  all  the  humiliation  involved. 
Seven  days  she  was  unclean.  Thirty-three  days 
more  she  was  debarred  from  attending  divine 
service  and  no  sacred  object  could  she  touch. 

Her  boy,  when  he  grew  up,  studied  the  code,  and 
there  he  found  this  affront  to  womanhood  explicit¬ 
ly  commanded  in  legal  terms.  For  bearing  a  son, 
seven  days  of  uncleanness,  thirty-three  days  of 
purification.  For  bearing  a  daughter,  fourteen 
days  of  uncleanness,  sixty-six  days  of  purification. 

In  their  endeavour  to  show  how  exalted  was  the 
position  of  woman  among  the  Jews,  theologians 
remind  us  that  Miriam  led  a  corybantic  dance  and 
was  accounted  a  prophetess;  that  another  prophet¬ 
ess,  Deborah,  held  court  under  a  palm  tree  in  the 
hills  and  judged  all  Israel;  that  Huldah  prophe¬ 
sied  in  Jerusalem;  and  that  Athaliah  was  a  queen. 
But  the  Jewish  chronicler  tells  us  that  the  church¬ 
ing  of  mothers  was  required  even  then,  and  the 
double  penalty  for  having  borne  a  daughter  reveals 
a  disdain  for  womanhood  that  still  expresses  itself 
in  the  orthodox  Jewish  prayer-book,  where  the 


54 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


men  are  bidden  to  recite,  “Oh,  Lord  God,  the  Eter¬ 
nal,  King  of  the  Universe,  I  thank  Thee  that  Thou 
hast  not  made  me  a  woman!” 

In  the  churching  of  women,  the  Nazarene  saw 
womanhood  dishonoured  by  a  custom  at  once 
ignoble  and  absurd.  He  never  denounced  that 
custom.  He  saw  women  held  in  subjection 
throughout  their  lives.  He  saw  them  hemmed  in 
by  a  Jewish  version  of  the  four  K’s — Kinder , 
Kuche,  Kleider,  Kirche.  He  never  intimated  that 
keeping  half  the  race  thus  subjected  was  inexpedi¬ 
ent  as  well  as  unjust,  nor  can  we  discover  among 
his  recorded  aphorisms  a  single  utterance  calcu¬ 
lated  to  forestall  the  anti-feminism  that  was  to 
prevail  among  his  followers  later  on. 

Paul,  for  example,  was  left  free  to  forbid  wo¬ 
men  to  teach.  He  could  forbid  them  to  speak  in 
church.  He  could  order  them  to  be  in  subjection 
to  their  husbands.  He  could  declare  that  the  man 
was  the  head  of  the  woman,  and  that  the  woman 
was  made  for  the  man.  He  even  dictated  fashions. 
Women  must  not  braid  their  hair,  they  must  not 
wear  jewellery,  they  must  not  wear  expensive 
dresses.  When  praying,  they  must  wear  veils. 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


55 


He  was  no  misogynist.  In  his  letters  he  sends 
his  love  to  several  women,  whose  names  we  know. 
But  he  opposed  the  emancipation  of  women,  and, 
when  once  theology  took  to  announcing  that  he 
wrote  by  supernatural  inspiration,  the  general 
principles  of  his  anti-feminism  gripped  the  church. 
Largely  because  of  a  few  paragraphs  by  a  First 
Century  bachelor,  women  have  waited  for  emanci¬ 
pation  until  well  within  our  own  day. 

To  be  sure,  it  was  no  work  of  Paul’s  when  the 
bishops  of  the  early  church  doubted  that  women 
had  souls,  nor  was  Paul  responsible  when  Scottish 
theologians  denounced  the  use  of  chloroform  in 
obstetrics  as  an  unauthorized  mitigation  of  the 
divine  curse  upon  woman;  yet  when  an  American 
newspaper  accused  Elizabeth  Cady  Stanton  of 
“infidel  fanaticism”  because  she  argued  for  wo¬ 
men’s  rights  before  the  New  York  Legislature,  we 
had  a  clear  case.  If  the  pen  was  the  editor’s,  the 
ink  was  Paul’s. 

He,  too,  would  have  berated  Mrs.  Stanton.  He 
obtained  no  instructions  sanctioning  any  such  be¬ 
haviour  as  hers.  By  the  same  token,  he  would 
have  berated  all  the  women  who  through  public 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


56 

agitation  have  won  a  place  for  their  sex  in  educa¬ 
tion,  in  business,  in  the  professions,  and  in  politics. 
And  if  he  were  with  us  to-day  it  is  more  than  likely 
that  he  would  attack  Prohibition.  On  that  point, 
also,  he  was  without  instructions,  and  personally 
he  was  a  “wet.”  In  a  letter  afterwards  pro¬ 
nounced  to  have  been  written  by  supernatural  in¬ 
spiration,  he  urged  a  clergyman  to  stop  drinking 
water. 

It  has  been  thought  strange  that  the  Nazarene 
should  have  left  us  no  observations  on  the  liquor 
problem.  In  the  old  Jewish  classics  he  encoun¬ 
tered  the  highly  bibulous  ideas  set  forth  by  Jewish 
Omar  Khayyams.  Several  such  there  had  been. 
One  sang  of  wine  that  cheereth  God  and  man. 
Another  told  the  poor  to  drown  their  sorrows  in 
drink.  A  third  asked  if  a  man  had  anything  better 
than  to  eat,  drink,  and  be  merry.  Frequent  pas¬ 
sages  in  those  old  Jewish  classics  roused  the  Naz¬ 
arene  to  indignation.  These  belauding  alcohol  he 
let  pass  without  comment. 

Moreover,  he  tramped  constantly  through  the 
wine  districts  of  Palestine  and  saw  with  his  own 
eyes  how  eagerly  the  Jews  obeyed  their  Omar 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


57 


Khayyams.  There  were  Jews  who  rose  up  early 
to  follow  strong  drink  and  tarried  late  into  the 
night  until  wine  inflamed  them.  We  read  of  a 
particularly  villainous  claret  that  gave  its  colour 
in  the  cup.  We  read  also  of  spiced  wines.  There 
was  even  a  mixed  drink,  the  Jewish  cocktail.  And 
we  read  of  the  consequences  of  excess — redness  of 
eyes,  poverty,  fights,  and  the  rest — for  the  Jewish 
temperance  advocates  were  as  outspoken  as  the 
Jewish  Omar  Khayyams.  Indeed,  we  learn  of 
total  abstainers,  the  Nazarites.  The  young  rabbi 
whose  mind  we  are  fathoming  knew  them  well,  but 
never  joined  them,  for  his  principles  and  his  prac¬ 
tice  forbade.  He  drank  wine  with  his  pupils.  He 
told  them  to  drink  to  his  memory  at  the  Passover 
feast.  He  said  there  would  be  wine  in  the  King¬ 
dom  of  God — meaning  in  this  instance  the  Messi¬ 
anic  Kingdom  that  was  to  come — and  that  he, 
himself,  would  drink  it  there.  His  enemies  called 
him  a  wine-bibber. 

Nor  was  it  a  “dry”  church  that  his  followers 
established.  Though  they  condemned  drunken¬ 
ness  and  insisted  that  deacons  must  not  be  given  to 
much  wine,  their  most  eminent  theologian  could 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


58 

still  warn  the  minister  against  the  evil  effects  of 
water  and  beg  him  to  break  the  habit. 

Here,  just  as  in  the  case  of  the  status  assigned  to 
woman,  the  Nazarene  left  an  enormous  social  prob¬ 
lem  unsolved,  and  if  the  total  abstainers  are  on  the 
right  side  of  the  question,  then  clearly  he  threw  the 
weight  of  his  example  on  the  wrong  side.  It  has 
been  a  great  embarrassment  to  theology. 

For,  while  his  prediction  of  his  second  coming 
was  not  fulfilled,  his  prediction  that  false  teachers 
would  arise  came  true.  His  own  pupils  joined 
them.  Despite  his  emphatic  statement  to  the  con¬ 
trary,  they  made  him  a  god.  And  one  attribute 
of  deity  is  omniscience;  a  god  can  see  ahead 
through  the  centuries.  Had  the  young  rabbi  been 
a  god,  he  would  have  reckoned  with  the  conse¬ 
quences  of  leaving  women  in  subjection — especial¬ 
ly  the  moral  consequences.  His  biographers  imply 
that  he  was  not  unfamiliar  with  underworld  condi¬ 
tions.  The  subjection  of  women— economic,  so¬ 
cial,  and  political — breeds  harlots.  A  god  would 
have  known  it,  just  as  a  god  would  have  known  that 
alcohol,  allowed  to  have  its  way,  was  destined  to 
work  monstrous  havoc — moral  havoc  in  particular 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


59 


— century  after  century.  Would  the  theologians 
have  us  believe  that  the  young  rabbi  did  know,  and 
that,  in  consequence,  he  was  measurably  respon¬ 
sible  for  what  came  of  his  failure  to  give  woman¬ 
kind  a  new  status  and  to  deal  effectively  with  the 
liquor  traffic? 

It  would  seem  more  reverent  to  take  the  young 
rabbi  at  his  word.  He  said,  many  a  time,  and  in 
plain  language,  that  he  was  not  seeing  ahead 
through  centuries  of  this  world’s  career.  He  said 
that  he  expected  this  world  soon  to  perish.  He 
said  he  thought  the  day  was  so  near  at  hand  that 
men  must  watch  for  it  with  unceasing  vigilance. 
He  said  that  he  himself  was  the  Messiah  who 
would  come.  He  never  said  that  he  was  a  god, 
and  even  when  he  predicted  that  false  teachers 
would  arise,  it  never  entered  his  thought  that,  in 
direct  violation  of  his  claims,  they  would  make 
him  a  god. 

This  effort  on  the  part  of  early  heretics,  among 
whom  certain  of  his  pupils  figured  conspicuously, 
has  added  nothing  to  his  glory.  As  a  god,  he  baf¬ 
fles  understanding  and  affronts  the  conscience.  As 
a  man,  with  a  man’s  mind  and  in  particular  a  Jew- 


6o 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


ish  mind,  he  is  comprehensible.  As  a  man,  he 
could  make  mistakes.  He  was  mistaken  about  his 
second  coming.  He  was  mistaken  about  the  future 
of  this  world.  If,  also,  he  made  mistakes  in  omit¬ 
ting  from  his  curriculum  in  personal  ethics  a 
course  leading  to  a  new  respect  for  womanhood 
and  another  leading  to  a  more  cautious  attitude  to¬ 
ward  alcohol,  we  are  at  liberty  to  note  such  mis¬ 
takes.  They  were  natural.  As  a  J ew,  he  shared  the 
contemporary  Jewish  estimate  of  womanhood.  As 
a  Jew,  in  a  wine-growing  country,  he  saw  no  more 
harm  in  temperate  drinking  than  other  Jews  did. 

Confessedly,  we  are  employing  the  realistic 
method  in  our  study  of  him.  We  seek  the  man 
himself.  And  we  are  dealing  with  a  man  so  im¬ 
measurably  great  that  nothing  but  a  lack  of  rever¬ 
ence  for  his  greatness  can  prompt  a  desire  to  hide 
his  limitations.  Only  by  recognizing  them  is  it 
possible  to  admire  rightly  the  superb  religious 
genius  who,  despite  limitations  and  errors,  was  the 
first  to  reveal  God  as  a  power  making  for  right¬ 
eousness  and  religion  as  the  life  of  God  in  the  soul 
of  man.  Limitations?  Errors?  Yes,  and  he  rose 
above  them  all. 


IX 


By  A  singular  paradox,  the  mind  that  more  than 
any  other  has  influenced  the  world's  thought  was  a 
provincial  mind,  and  only  by  examining  its  provin¬ 
cialism  can  we  appreciate  its  magnificent  uni¬ 
versality. 

Whereas  Paul,  though  brought  up  a  Pharisee, 
was  saturated  with  Roman  ideas,  and  whereas  John 
was  intellectually  a  Greek,  the  rabbi  who  went  out 
from  a  small  town  in  Galilee  had  nothing  eclectic 
about  him ;  Roman  ideas  concerned  him  not,  Greek 
ideas  he  ignored.  So  provincial  was  he,  indeed, 
that  he  accepted  with  unquestioning  faith  the  very 
mythology  of  his  race.  He  believed  in  Satan. 
He  believed  in  the  angels.  He  believed  in  Jonah. 
He  believed  in  Elijah  reincarnated  as  John  the 
Baptist. 

Strange  misconceptions  prevail  as  to  the  Jewish 
accounts  of  Satan.  Theologians  have  told  us  that 
Satan  was  the  snake  who  tempted  Eve.  The  ac- 

61 


62 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


count  itself  says  nothing  of  the  kind ;  it  says  a  snake 
was  the  snake.  Moreover,  theologians  have  told 
us  that  Satan  was  the  Lucifer  who  fell  from 
heaven.  The  account  itself  says  the  king  of  Baby¬ 
lon  was  that  Lucifer.  Tauntingly,  jeeringly,  the 
old  writer  bids  his  majesty  recall  that  he  has 
styled  himself  Lucifer,  the  Light  Bearer.  Down 
he  will  come,  and  the  thing  is  as  good  as  accom¬ 
plished  already.  Had  John  Milton  understood 
this,  his  daughters  would  have  been  spared  the 
trouble  of  taking  a  great  deal  of  unnecessary  dic¬ 
tation. 

But  the  authentic  Jewish  Satan  is  strange 
enough.  We  first  come  upon  him  in  a  Jewish  im¬ 
itation  of  a  Greek  tragedy,  where  he  is  seen  in 
heaven  beside  the  throne  of  God,  obtaining  divine 
authorization  for  a  moral  experiment  on  Job.  It 
ends  happily,  but  not  before  Job  has  been  sub¬ 
jected  to  unmerited  afflictions. 

Nevertheless,  the  man  of  Nazareth  accepted 
Satan  as  a  living  reality.  He  said  Satan  came 
to  him  and  sought  to  get  away  Peter.  He  said 
Satan  had  bound  a  patient  of  his  for  eighteen 
years. 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF  63 

With  the  same  unquestioning  faith  he  accepted 
the  angels,  though  the  Jewish  classics  in  which  he 
read  of  them  described  creatures  very  different 
from  the  angels  of  Fra  Angelico  and  Della  Rob¬ 
bia.  Some  had  wings,  to  be  sure,  but  those  Jacob 
saw  in  his  dream  required  a  ladder,  and  in  general, 
the  angels  were  remarkably  like  men.  Two  angels 
visited  Lot  in  Sodom.  He  rose  up  and  went  to 
meet  them  at  the  gate.  There  he  bowed  himself 
with  his  face  to  the  ground,  and,  addressing  them 
as  umy  lords,”  invited  them  in.  He  washed  their 
feet.  He  gave  them  rooms.  He  provided  a  meal, 
which  they  ate. 

Early  Christian  angels  resembled  humans  as 
closely.  In  a  letter  written  by  a  follower  of  the 
Nazarene  it  was  asserted  that  any  one  welcoming 
strangers  into  his  home  might  find  himself  enter¬ 
taining  angels.  When  Peter  escaped  from  jail  and 
knocked  at  the  door  of  a  house,  people  who  could 
not  believe  it  was  Peter  said  it  must  be  his  angel. 

But  in  the  angel  Balaam  met  we  have  another 
species,  quite.  Balaam,  a  Mesopotamian  trance- 
medium,  was  riding  his  donkey  along  the  highway 
in  broad  daylight  when  that  occurred.  The  don- 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


64 

key  saw  the  angel  and  shied,  but  Balaam  saw  noth¬ 
ing.  He  smote  the  donkey.  The  donkey,  however, 
kept  seeing  the  angel  and  kept  on  shying.  When 
Balaam  smote  her  again,  the  Lord  opened  her 
mouth  and  she  spoke,  protesting.  Finally,  the 
Lord  opened  Balaam’s  eyes  and  then  the  angel  be¬ 
came  visible  to  him  also. 

In  point  of  morals,  the  angels  differed  widely. 
There  were  good  angels  and  bad  angels.  One, 
called  the  Angel  of  the  Lord,  was  a  mighty  heads¬ 
man.  On  a  memorable  occasion  he  went  forth  and 
slew  in  the  camp  of  the  Assyrians  an  hundred  and 
fourscore  and  five  thousand,  so  that  early  in  the 
morning  they  were  all  dead  corpses. 

When  we  first  encounter  them  in  the  Jewish 
legend,  the  angels  are  called  the  sons  of  God. 
They  saw  the  daughters  of  earth  that  they  were 
fair.  They  took  them  wives  of  all  that  they  chose, 
and  their  children  became  mighty  men  of  old,  men 
of  renown.  This  propensity  on  the  angels’  part 
was  recognized  by  Paul,  who  commanded  wives 
to  wear  a  mark  of  authority  because  of  the  angels. 

Despite  all  this,  the  man  of  Nazareth  believed 
implicitly  in  the  angels.  He  spoke  of  guardian 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


65 

angels,  with  faces  turned  ever  toward  the  throne 
of  God.  When  beset  by  his  enemies  he  said  that 
God  could  send  more  than  twelve  legions  of  angels 
to  defend  him. 

Not  less  firmly  he  believed  in  Jonah,  and,  where¬ 
as  the  old  account  mentions  only  a  great  fish,  he 
says  plainly  that  the  great  fish  was  a  whale.  He 
even  makes  Jonah’s  adventure  an  argument  to  sup¬ 
port  his  prophecy  of  his  own  resurrection.  When 
an  evil  and  perverse  generation  demands  a  sign,  no 
sign  shall  be  given  it  but  the  sign  of  the  prophet 
Jonah,  for,  as  Jonah  was  three  days  and  three 
nights  in  the  belly  of  the  whale,  so  would  the  son 
of  man  be  three  days  and  three  nights  in  the  heart 
of  the  earth. 

In  approaching  the  young  rabbi’s  belief  that  his 
cousin,  John  the  Baptist,  was  a  reincarnation  of 
Elijah,  we  seem  to  have  crossed  over  into  some¬ 
thing  strangely  like  Hinduism,  yet  the  idea  was 
purely  Jewish.  Universal  reincarnation  held  no 
place  in  the  old  Jewish  creed,  for  the  old  Jewish 
creed  maintained  that  the  soul  could  not  survive 
death.  But,  according  to  legend,  Elijah  had  not 
died.  Body,  clothes,  and  all,  he  had  ascended  into 


66  THE  MAN  HIMSELF 

heaven.  There  came  a  chariot  of  fire  with  horses 
of  fire  and  Elijah  went  up  by  a  whirlwind. 

A  previous  case,  that  of  Enoch,  had  been  equi¬ 
vocal  :  God  took  him ;  but  how,  and  whither,  and 
into  what  condition,  the  account  failed  to  say.  No 
one  gave  much  thought  to  Enoch.  Elijah’s  case, 
however,  was  clear.  It  stirred  the  imagination, 
piqued  curiosity.  How  was  Elijah  faring,  up 
yonder?  What  was  he  about?  What  spectacles 
of  celestial  glory  had  he  witnessed?  What  tales 
could  he  tell  of  angels  and  archangels  and,  per¬ 
haps,  Satan?  Such  questions  led,  not  unnaturally, 
to  a  still  more  interesting  one.  If  Elijah  could 
ascend  into  heaven,  might  he  not  as  easily  return 
to  earth? 

In  the  course  of  time  there  arose  a  prophet  who 
declared  that  just  this  would  happen.  The  pre¬ 
diction  became  so  widely  known  that  when  the 
Nazarene  hung  upon  the  cross  and,  in  his  last 
agony,  cried  out  in  words  from  a  Jewish  poem,  the 
unlettered  bystanders,  knowing  the  vernacular,  but 
not  the  language  of  the  classics,  were  misled  by  a 
resemblance  of  sounds  and,  their  minds  harking 
back  to  the  prophecy,  thought  that  he  was  calling 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


67 

for  Elijah.  A  few  jeered.  The  rest  waited  to  see 
if  actually  Elijah  would  not  descend  from  heaven 
in  a  chariot  of  fire  drawn  by  flaming  steeds. 

Still,  there  would  have  been  a  difference  between 
returning  as  he  went  and  returning  as  an  infant 
John  the  Baptist  to  begin  life  anew.  That  would 
have  meant  reincarnation  in  the  Hindu  sense.  To 
a  Jew  of  the  prophet’s  day  it  would  have  involved 
heresy.  Yet  some  very  pronounced  changes  had 
occurred  in  Jewish  thought  since  then.  The  Jews 
now  commonly  believed  that  the  soul  survived 
death,  and  there  were  those  among  them  who  be¬ 
lieved  that  in  rare  instances  souls  might  be  rein¬ 
carnated.  Some  announced  that  the  young  rabbi 
from  Nazareth  was  a  reincarnation  of  Isaiah. 
Others  said  he  was  Elijah. 

So  he  affronted  no  convention  of  contemporary 
thought  when  he  announced  that  already  Elijah 
had  returned  to  earth  in  the  person  of  John  the 
Baptist.  It  seemed  to  him  a  thing  by  no  means 
difficult  to  credit.  If  he  himself  was  the  Messiah, 
why  should  not  his  cousin  have  had  this  lesser  glory 
bestowed  upon  him?  Then,  too,  the  thing  gained 
a  certain  picturesque,  though  superficial,  plausi- 


68 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


bility  from  circumstances.  For  centuries  there 
had  been  no  prophets.  Now,  beside  Jordan,  stood 
a  figure  garbed  like  the  uncouth  Jewish  dervishes 
of  old  and  reviving  their  lapsed  prestige. 

What  convinced  the  Nazarene,  however,  was 
not  that.  What  convinced  him  was  the  advent  of 
John  at  precisely  the  right  time.  For  the  ancient 
dervish  who  predicted  Elijah’s  return  had  said  it 
would  occur  shortly  before  the  great  and  terrible 
day  of  the  Lord.  Those  were  his  words.  Yonder, 
beside  Jordan,  was  what  the  young  rabbi  took  to 
be  their  fulfilment. 

That  assumed  fulfilment  reinforced  the  young 
rabbi’s  contention  that  ere  long  his  own  second 
coming  would  usher  in  the  Messianic  Kingdom 
over  which  he  was  to  reign.  Thus  the  idea  of 
Elijah’s  reincarnation  fitted  in  perfectly  with  the 
idea  that  was  always  uppermost  in  the  young 
rabbi’s  mind. 

It  is  immaterial  that,  when  the  story  of  his  being 
Elijah  reached  John,  he  denied  it;  had  he  endorsed 
the  story  we  should  not  be  satisfied.  We  should 
ask  how  he  knew.  And  yet  this  belief  of  the 
Nazarene’s  that  his  cousin  was  Elijah,  like  his  be- 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


69 

lief  in  Satan  and  the  angels  and  in  Jonah,  takes  on 
a  great  importance  when  we  come  to  appraise  him. 

They  show  how  Jewish  he  was,  how  provincial, 
how  handicapped.  That  the  same  rabbi  should, 
nevertheless,  have  fathomed  the  depths  of  spiritual 
truth,  giving  us  our  loftiest  conception  of  God  and 
our  profoundest  understanding  of  man,  and  should 
thus  have  achieved  a  sublime  universality,  with  the 
right  everywhere  to  dominate  the  soul — this  is  the 
most  impressive  revelation  of  his  genius. 

Legend  has  sought  to  glorify  him  by  saying  he 
could  walk  on  the  sea,  fast  forty  days,  still  the 
tempest,  turn  water  into  wine,  and  multiply  loaves 
and  fishes;  whereas  the  real  miracle  was  himself. 


X 


Believing  in  Satan,  in  the  angels,  in  Jonah,  and 
in  the  reincarnation  of  Elijah  as  John  the  Baptist, 
the  Nazarene  showed  that  he  saw  in  the  mere  won- 
der  of  a  thing  no  obstacle  to  its  acceptance,  pro¬ 
vided  it  were  vouched  for  in  the  sacred  literature 
of  his  race.  There  he  read  that  a  virgin  would 
conceive  and  bear  a  child,  and  theologians  have 
told  us  that  the  prophecy  was  fulfilled  in  his  own 
miraculous  birth. 

Two  of  his  four  biographers  say  he  was  miracu¬ 
lously  born.  One  of  them  thinks  so  because  Mary’s 
betrothed  had  a  dream  to  that  effect,  the  other  be¬ 
cause  of  the  prophecy,  though  the  truth  would 
have  rested  upon  the  testimony  of  one  woman, 
Mary  herself.  Though  she  is  said  to  have  im¬ 
provised  the  superb  hymn  of  thanksgiving  and 
praise  preserved  for  our  admiration,  it  nowhere 
asserts  that  her  child  was  to  be  supernaturally 
born.  Nor  have  we  any  testimony  from  her  as  to 


70 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


7i 

that.  Instead,  the  biographers  quote  Gabriel,  an 
angel. 

According  to  this  report,  Gabriel  also  declared 
that  the  child  would  inherit  the  throne  of  an  ances¬ 
tor  on  the  male  line,  and  named  the  ancestor. 
Similarly,  the  very  first  sentence  of  the  New  Testa¬ 
ment  mentions  the  child’s  ancestors  on  the  father’s 
side,  and  the  genealogical  table  that  immediately 
follows  traces  his  lineage  in  the  male  line.  With 
these  statements  as  a  foundation,  the  writer  goes 
on  to  declare  that  the  Nazarene  had  no  earthly 
father,  but  was  born  of  a  virgin. 

This  bald  inconsistency  would  astonish  us  were 
we  not  acquainted  with  an  older  work,  where  two 
accounts  of  the  creation  are  placed  side  by  side, 
though  differing  in  important  details,  and  where 
two  different  accounts  of  the  flood  are  as  fear¬ 
lessly  juxtaposed.  Consistency  was  not  the  ideal 
of  Jewish  chroniclers;  a  profound  reverence  for 
old  manuscripts  was.  If  a  chronicler  found  two 
accounts  disagreeing,  he  kept  both,  and  copied 
both  into  his  own.  That  was  the  way,  and  we  may 
well  remind  ourselves  that  something  remarkably 
like  it  was  the  way  of  a  church  council  long  after- 


72 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


ward.  There  the  question  arose  as  to  whether 
God  had  created  the  universe  instantaneously  or  in 
six  days.  Quite  solemnly  theologians  decreed  that 
all  good  Christians  must  believe  both. 

So,  when  an  early  Jewish  Christian  collected 
documents  for  use  in  compiling  a  biography  of  the 
Nazarene,  it  was  natural  that  he  should  use  them 
all,  discarding  neither  the  legend  of  the  virgin 
birth  nor  the  genealogy  in  the  male  line.  To  him, 
both  were  sacred;  he  had  that  sort  of  mind. 

Our  own  minds  are  not  so  made.  We  resent  in¬ 
consistency.  In  much  the  same  spirit  we  resent 
incongruity.  Were  the  legends  of  the  virgin  birth 
less  exquisitely  phrased,  many  might  see  in  them 
a  recrudescence  of  the  stories  in  which  angels  mate 
with  mortals  or  note  a  resemblance  to  the  miracu¬ 
lous  births  so  common  in  mythology.  Sheer  liter¬ 
ary  art  prevent.  There  are  even  those  who  say 
the  legend  enhances  the  glory  of  God. 

The  doubters  (numerous  theologians  now  doubt 
the  virgin  birth)  are  moved  less  by  aesthetic  than 
by  intellectual  repugnance.  The  story  affronts 
reason,  and  in  these  modern  days  there  is  growing 
up  a  belief — heretical  as  yet,  but,  nevertheless,  to 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


73 

be  reckoned  with — that  truth  is  reasonable.  More¬ 
over,  many  are  unwilling  to  credit  the  legend  be¬ 
cause  it  makes  the  rabbi  of  Nazareth  a  super¬ 
natural  being,  automatically  moral,  in  which  case 
what  value  to  mere  humans  has  his  example? 

All  this,  however,  is  beside  the  point.  We  are 
not  seeking  to  determine,  as  by  court  procedure, 
whether  or  not  the  young  rabbi  was  miraculously 
born.  The  only  person  who  could  have  told  us 
died  without  leaving  any  recorded  testimony,  and, 
had  she  claimed  that  the  birth  was  miraculous,  it 
would  have  remained  to  establish  her  veracity. 
What  we  are  attempting  to  learn  is  whether  or  not 
the  young  rabbi  himself  believed  that  he  had  no 
human  father. 

Not  one  of  his  four  biographers  asserts  that  he 
so  believed.  He  was  never  quoted  as  so  saying. 
On  the  only  occasion  mentioned  when  people 
asked  who  his  father  was,  he  let  them  go  on  be¬ 
lieving  that  his  father  was  Joseph,  the  Nazarene 
carpenter. 

Two  of  his  biographers  omit  the  legend  of  the 
birth.  Of  these,  one  is  supposed  to  have  been  the 
favourite  pupil  to  whom  he  confided  his  most  i  1- 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


timate  convictions  regarding  his  relation  with  God. 
Whole  monologues  are  recorded,  yet  not  once  does 
he  speak  of  a  miraculous  birth. 

After  his  death,  when  his  followers  deified  him, 
an  elaborate  theology  developed,  with  his  divinity 
as  its  central  idea.  We  have  records  of  it — not 
only  sermons,  more  or  less  accurately  reported, 
but  theological  treatises  dedicated  to  churches  or 
to  individuals.  Many  different  writers  contrib¬ 
uted  to  this  library  of  argumentative  literature. 
Some  addressed  Greeks,  some  Romans,  some  Jews. 
In  each  instance  the  writer  sought  to  fit  his  the¬ 
ology  to  the  convictions  already  held  by  his 
readers.  Hence  the  analogies  with  Greek  philos¬ 
ophy,  with  Roman  justice,  and  with  the  Jewish 
sacrificial  system.  Thus,  with  surprising  resource¬ 
fulness  and  versatility,  these  impromptu  metaphy¬ 
sicians  ransacked  the  entire  realm  of  current 
thought  for  arguments  to  prove  that  the  rabbi  who 
had  sought  martyrdom  and  found  it,  was  a  god. 
But  the  most  convincing  argument — namely,  that 
he  was  supernaturally  born — they  never  used. 
There  can  be  only  one  reason.  They  had  never 
heard  of  it.  Nor  had  he,  we  may  conclude. 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


75 


Diligently  he  read  the  ancient  scroll  in  which 
it  was  predicted  that  a  virgin  would  conceive  and 
bear  a  child.  He  searched  all  the  Jewish  classics. 
He  had  a  strong  personal  motive  for  so  doing.  He 
wanted  more  and  more  evidence  that  he  was  the 
Messiah  destined  to  come  again.  Any  phrase  that 
could  be  so  interpreted  had  an  enormous  interest 
for  him.  But  when  he  came  to  this  singular  pas¬ 
sage,  which  one  of  his  biographers  uses  as  a  proof 
of  his  miraculous  birth,  he  saw  nothing  to  concern 
him.  It  was  irrelevant — completely  so. 

The  babe  whose  birth  it  foretold  was  to  be 
called  Immanuel — a  name  the  young  rabbi  never 
bore.  Ere  the  babe  was  old  enough  to  know  right 
from  wrong,  two  kingdoms,  Syria  and  Samaria, 
were  to  fall.  The  Nazarene  could  not  learn  that 
during  his  infancy  any  such  events  had  occurred. 

It  is  not  astonishing  that  a  First-Century  biog¬ 
rapher,  bent  on  deifying  his  hero,  should  have  seen 
the  man  of  Nazareth  foreshadowed  in  this  proph¬ 
ecy.  At  a  far  later  period,  metaphysicians  as  ill- 
qualified  wrote  commentaries  on  a  collection  of 
grossly  erotic  poems  still  preserved  in  the  Bible 
and  said  the  lovers  depicted  were  Christ  and  his 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


76 

church.  But  we  are  not  living  in  the  days  when 
Solomon’s  Song  could  figure  as  devotional  litera¬ 
ture,  and  still  less  are  we  living  in  the  First  Cen¬ 
tury.  We  are  free  to  liberate  realities  from  the 
growth  of  metaphysics  and  legend  that  has  hidden 
them. 

It  is  not  difficult.  It  involves  no  perils.  It 
brings  no  loss.  On  the  contrary,  it  brings  inesti¬ 
mable  gain.  We  see  the  man  himself,  to  whose 
glory  neither  legend  nor  metaphysics  can  add. 
Rather,  they  detract  from  it,  dishonouring  the  god 
they  have  created. 

For  thus  they  make  him  incredible  save  to  a 
minority  in  each  generation.  And  that  minority 
has  its  seasons  of  doubt.  Preachers,  even,  have 
theirs.  That  is  why  modern  preaching  has  lost 
its  power.  First-Century  errors  were  an  aid  to 
faith  in  the  First  Century;  the  more  incredible  a 
thing  was  the  more  easily  it  convinced.  The  same 
thing  is  now  an  obstacle  to  faith,  and  resembles  a 
foreign  body  in  the  mind.  Believers  sense  it  there, 
and  reproach  themselves  for  so  doing.  They  be¬ 
lieve,  not  because  they  are  unable  to  disbelieve,  but 
because  they  consciously,  and  with  an  effort,  over- 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


77 


come  difficulties  presented  by  ascertained  knowl¬ 
edge.  This  may  be  piety,  but  it  is  not  religion. 
Religion  has  no  quarrel  with  ascertained  knowl¬ 
edge.  To  say  that  it  has  is  to  make  God  a  liar — 
which  many  pietists  are  now  attempting  to  do,  in 
a  strange  and  profoundly  irreligious  confidence 
that  so  they  serve  him  to  good  purpose. 


XI 


The  god  created  by  First-Century  metaphysi¬ 
cians,  whose  writings  theology  afterward  pro¬ 
nounced  infallible,  had  laid  the  foundations  of  the 
earth,  they  said.  He  was  before  all  things.  In 
him  all  things  consisted.  The  world  was  made  by 
him  and  without  him  was  not  anything  made  that 
was  made.  Even  God  the  Father  was  said  to  have 
addressed  him  as  God. 

This  complete  deification,  though  amazing  in 
its  audacity  and  its  want  of  reverence  alike  for  God 
the  Father  and  for  the  teachings  given  in  unmis¬ 
takable  terms  by  the  Nazarene,  was  an  easy  matter 
in  the  First  Century,  A.  D.  Whole  races  then  be¬ 
lieved  a  man  could  be  a  god — Greeks,  Romans, 
Egyptians. 

Even  while  living,  Alexander  the  Great  had 
proclaimed  himself  a  god.  Julius  Caesar  had  done 
the  same.  His  image  had  appeared  among  those 
of  the  gods  in  the  pompa  of  the  Arena.  The  in- 

78 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


79 


scription  on  the  plinth  of  his  statue  in  a  Roman 
temple  had  declared  him  an  unconquerable  god. 
A  special  priesthood  had  seen  to  it  that  he  was 
properly  worshipped.  In  Egypt,  the  pharaohs 
had  long  been  looked  upon  as  gods.  A  signet  ring 
once  belonging  to  an  Egyptian  monarch  and  now 
to  be  seen  in  New  York  at  the  Metropolitan  Mu¬ 
seum,  bears  his  majesty’s  ritualistic  title,  “Ra,  Lord 
of  All  Things;  Beloved  of  Amen  Ra;  Lord  of 
Eternity.” 

It  is  true  that  the  Jewish  mind  affected  a  horror 
of  all  foreign  ideas,  and  especially  of  foreign  re¬ 
ligious  ideas.  But  it  took  the  united  efforts  of 
rebuking  prophets  and  stern  monarchs  a  very  long 
time  to  make  them  entirely  stop  worshipping 
Phoenician  or  Canaanitish  gods — Baal,  Ashtoreth, 
and  their  kind — nor  could  anything  restrain  them 
from  copying  Babylonian  myths  into  their  own 
chronicles;  so,  when  Greeks  and  Romans  came  to 
Palestine,  the  tales  they  told  of  the  mighty  gods, 
Alexander  and  Caesar,  were  not  without  effect. 
An  intense  nationalism,  dominant  among  Jews 
ever  since  the  great  deportation,  prevented  their 
taking  either  the  Greek  or  the  Roman  god-emperor 


8o 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


too  seriously,  but  the  mere  tales  prepared  in  cer¬ 
tain  Jewish  minds  a  lodging  place  for  the  idea  that 
in  reality  the  Nazarene  had  been  a  god. 

Moreover,  their  own  Jehovah  was  so  human — 
that  is  to  say,  so  anthropomorphic — as  to  have  pre¬ 
pared  some  such  lodging  place  already.  In  their 
sacred  scrolls  they  read  of  his  outstretched  arm, 
his  watchful  eye,  his  nostrils  that  loved  the  smell 
of  burning  meat.  Even  the  great  prophets,  those 
whose  rhapsodies  have  at  times  an  incomparable 
poetic  grandeur,  disclose  at  other  times  their  con¬ 
ception  of  God  as  a  mere  oriental  monarch  seated 
on  a  throne  and  acclaiming  the  virtues  of  unpro¬ 
voked  warfare.  Base,  indeed,  were  many  accounts 
of  God  in  Jewish  legend.  Theologians  have  told 
us  that  Jacob  wrestled  with  an  angel,  but  the  ac¬ 
count  says  he  wrestled  with  a  man,  whom  he  after¬ 
ward  recognized  as  God.  Minds  saturated  with 
these  and  similar  ideas  could  well  have  reasoned 
that,  if  God  was  a  man,  a  man  might  be  a  god. 

This  is  far  from  saying  that  any  Jew  of  the 
First  Century,  A.  D.,  was  ever  conscious  of  so 
reasoning.  Yet,  once  the  idea  presented  itself,  it 
found  immediate  acceptance,  particularly  among 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


81 


the  Nazarene’s  former  pupils.  Those  who  had 
known  him  most  intimately  were  the  first  to  be¬ 
lieve  it.  They  felt  that  here  was  the  only  expla¬ 
nation  of  the  man  they  remembered. 

But  acceptance  is  one  thing,  and  intellectual  con¬ 
sistency  another.  The  longer  the  First-Century 
metaphysicians  considered,  the  more  they  wavered. 
They  said  he  was  God,  then  that  he  was  the  image 
of  God,  then  that  in  him  dwelt  the  fullness  of  the 
godhead  bodily,  then  that  he  was  God  completely, 
and  so  it  went.  The  mass  of  theological  literature 
they  have  left  us  presents  a  score  of  different 
theories,  each  interesting  to  theologians  as  afford¬ 
ing  opportunity  for  endless  speculation  and  debate, 
and  each  interesting  to  us  all  as  showing  the  pro¬ 
found  impression  the  man  had  made  on  his  fol¬ 
lowers.  That  alone  is  sufficient  to  prove  the 
consummate  beauty  of  his  character,  the  sublime 
and  unexampled  elevation  of  his  soul. 

Yet  he  never  claimed  to  be  a  god.  He  never 
claimed  divine  attributes.  Once  he  denied  that 
he  was  morally  perfect,  and  said  that  only  God 
was.  He  never  claimed  omnipotence;  the  same 
metaphysician  who  says  the  world  was  made  by 


82 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


the  man  of  Nazareth  quotes  him  as  insisting  that, 
of  himself,  he  could  do  nothing.  True,  he  claimed 
the  right  to  forgive  sins,  but  he  told  his  pupils 
that  they,  too,  could  forgive  sins. 

Human  greatness  he  acknowledged.  With  a 
frankness  the  manners  of  the  time  permitted,  he 
said  that  he  was  greater  than  Jonah,  and  greater, 
even,  than  Solomon.  Son  of  man,  the  title  he  be¬ 
stowed  upon  himself,  he  took  from  an  old  prophet, 
whom  God,  according  to  the  prophet,  always  ad¬ 
dressed  by  that  title.  This  use  of  it  by  a  First-Cen¬ 
tury  rabbi  amounted  to  a  kind  of  self-ordination. 

Yet  how  modest  he  was !  He  used  another  title, 
Son  of  God,  never  guessing  that  his  followers 
would  infer  that  he  himself  was  a  god  and  that 
they  would  do  it  despite  his  repeated  declaration 
that  they,  too,  were  sons  of  God.  How  little  he 
realized  the  beauty  and  overwhelming  impressive¬ 
ness  of  his  own  personality,  which,  in  the  very  na¬ 
ture  of  things,  considering  the  devotion  it  begot, 
was  sure  to  result  in  calamitous,  albeit  affectionate, 
misinterpretation. 

As  little  did  he  realize  that,  largely  because  he 
called  himself  the  son  of  God,  Christianity  would 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF  83 

place  the  worship  of  the  Nazarene  before  the  imi¬ 
tation  of  him  and  actually  think  first  of  the  Naz¬ 
arene  and  only  secondarily  of  God.  In  his  cer¬ 
tainty  that  he  was  the  Messiah,  destined  to  come 
again,  he  foresaw  no  Christianity,  no  worship  of 
himself,  no  metaphysical  interpretation  of  him. 
He  foresaw  no  centuries.  Within  a  few  brief 
years,  both  sun  and  moon  would  be  darkened  and 
the  entire  earthly  order  of  things  swept  away  for 
ever. 

\  This  central  idea  of  his  that  he  was  the  Messiah 
gives  us  our  key  to  the  mystery  of  what  he  believed 
regarding  his  own  nature.  The  Messiah,  he 
thought,  must  endure  martyrdom.  But  when  we 
examine  the  prophecy  we  learn  that  the  martyr, 
called  the  servant  of  God,  personified  the  single 
generation  of  Jews  upon  whom  was  to  fall  the 
cleansing  wrath  of  God,  to  the  advantage  of  pos¬ 
terity  as  well  as  in  expiation  of  sins  committed  by 
past  generations.  The  servant  of  God  was  not 
a  god.  There  is  nowhere  the  faintest  hint  that  he 
was  a  god.  Nor  was  the  Messianic  king  to  be  a 
god.  He  was  to  be  a  prince  of  the  house  of  David. 

So  we  find  that  the  long  and  fruitless  theological 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


84 

endeavour  to  explain  how  the  Nazarene  could  be 
at  the  same  time  God  and  man  was  quite  uncalled 
for.  He  made  no  such  endeavour  himself.  He 
saw  no  occasion  to.  He  was  a  man,  therefore  a 
son  of  God.  He  was  the  unique  but  entirely  human 
Messiah;  in  his  uniqueness  as  Messiah,  he  was  the 
son  of  God,  but  for  no  other  reason.  He  spoke  of 
God  as  “my  Father”  and  as  “your  Father.”  He 
called  his  followers  his  brethren. 

The  key  that  unlocks  the  mystery  of  what  he  be¬ 
lieved  regarding  himself  unlocks  also  a  number 
of  otherwise  insoluble  mysteries  as  to  what  his 
followers  believed  regarding  him.  Loyal  inter¬ 
preters  though  they  sought  to  be,  they  reflect  him, 
not  in  a  glass  darkly,  but  in  a  glass  distorted  by  a 
loving,  though  regrettable,  misapprehension  of  his 
nature.  They  mistake  him  for  God.  Things  they 
should  of  right  attribute  to  God  they  attribute  to 
him — ineffably  beautiful  and  precious  and  soul¬ 
regenerating  things,  which  become,  not  less  won¬ 
derful,  but  more,  when  we  understand  that  all  are 
the  gifts  of  the  one  spirit  who  is  over  all,  through 
all,  under  all,  and  in  whom  we  live,  move,  and 
have  our  being. 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF  85 

This,  in  a  word,  was  the  very  simple  and  entirely 
understandable  faith  of  the  man  himself.  Once 
we  grasp  it,  it  clings  to  us  so  that  by  no  process  of 
intellection  and  in  no  grimmest  mood  of  spiritual 
lethargy  or  rebelliousness  can  we  shake  it  off.  It 
stays.  And  no  new  and  surprising  advent  of  ascer¬ 
tained  knowledge  will  dim  its  radiance.  Instead, 
it  illumines  knowledge. 


XII 


Theology,  as  we  know  it  to-day,  appears  the 
product  of  quiet  reflection,  disturbed  now  and  then 
by  controversy,  but  in  the  main  an  affair  of  univer¬ 
sity  quadrangles  or  ministerial  libraries.  It  has 
not  always  been  so.  At  times,  its  most  fateful  de¬ 
cisions,  destined  powerfully  to  affect  the  thought 
of  generations,  our  own  included,  have  been  ar¬ 
rived  at  amid  scenes  ill  befitting  the  occasion  and 
in  circumstances  we  recall  with  anything  but 
pride. 

One  such  occasion,  at  a  town  in  Asia  Minor,  was 
especially  fateful,  especially  marred  by  unseemly 
incidents,  especially  inglorious  in  its  circumstances. 
Need  had  been  felt  of  a  unifying  force  to  hold  to¬ 
gether  the  Roman  Empire.  Christianity,  it  was 
thought,  might  serve  the  purpose;  but  Christians, 
at  the  time,  were  at  odds  among  themselves  re¬ 
garding  the  inner  nature  of  God.  Before  Chris¬ 
tianity  could  serve  as  the  desired  cohesive  factor, 

86 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF  87 

agreement  must  be  reached.  It  must  be  reached 
by  vote. 

To  determine  the  inner  nature  of  God  by  vote, 
the  Emperor  Constantine,  then  a  pagan,  assembled 
atNicaea  a  congress  of  metaphysical  theorists  from 
all  the  churches  in  the  year  325  A.  D.  From  his 
golden  throne  in  the  midst  of  them,  he  watched, 
rather  than  followed,  their  debates,  for  they 
wrangled  in  Greek,  a  language  with  which  he  was 
but  little  acquainted.  However,  there  came  mo¬ 
ments  when  eyes  were  as  good  as  ears — for  ex¬ 
ample,  when  the  aged  Arius  stood  up  to  speak  and 
Nicholas  of  Myra  struck  him  in  the  face. 

After  many  tempestuous  sessions,  of  which  the 
less  said,  the  better,  the  inner  nature  of  God  was 
at  last  determined.  God,  according  to  a  majority 
of  the  ballots,  was  a  Trinity — three  persons, 
distinct  but  not  separate — Father,  Son,  and  Holy 
Ghost,  one  God. 

This  unimaginable  idea,  arithmetically  self¬ 
destructive  and  philosophically  abnormal,  has 
been  the  test  of  orthodoxy  for  sixteen  hundred 
years.  No  one  has  ever  understood  it.  No  one 
can.  Yet  to  doubt  it  is  accounted  a  sin.  A  dam- 


88 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


natory  clause  accompanying  the  Athanasian  Creed 
tells  doubters  they  will  perish  eternally. 

Frequently  one  meets  people  who  say  they  find 
the  idea  of  the  Trinity  entirely  comprehensible, 
but  it  soon  develops  that  they  have  in  mind  another 
idea  and  not  this.  Belief  in  one  God  manifesting 
himself  in  three  different  ways  is  not  Trinitarian- 
ism,  it  is  Sabellianism,  a  notorious  heresy.  Most 
church-members  to-day — and,  indeed,  most  clergy¬ 
men — are  Sabellians.  According  to  the  Athanas¬ 
ian  Creed,  they  will  therefore  perish  eternally. 

The  pure  dogma  which  teaches  that  three  per¬ 
sons,  distinct  but  not  separate,  are  one,  was  formu¬ 
lated  by  a  type  of  mind  that  has  entirely  vanished 
from  the  earth.  So  it  is  not  remarkable  that  the¬ 
ology,  in  its  efforts  to  sustain  the  dogma,  should  now 
and  then  have  employed  some  very  curious  devices. 
Theologians  there  have  been  who  argued  that,  in¬ 
asmuch  as  trinities  are  of  common  occurrence  in 
heathen  religions,  the  theorists  at  Nicaea  made  no 
mistake.  Again,  we  have  been  told  that  the 
Hebrew  word  for  deity  is  plural,  which  it  is,  and 
that  this  plurality  of  idiom  originated  in  a  design 
to  intimate  a  plurality  in  the  nature  of  God.  In 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF  89 

reality  it  intimates  that  the  race  who  originated 
the  idiom  worshipped  a  plurality  of  gods  at  the 
time  and  for  a  considerable  time  thereafter.  It 
was  from  ingrained  habit  that  they  called  their 
own  Jehovah,  not  God,  but  Gods.  Still  again, 
theologians  have  employed  analogy.  As,  in  the 
material  sun,  the  light  and  the  heat  proceed  from 
the  orb,  yet  the  three  are  of  the  same  duration,  so 
in  the  deity  the  Son  and  the  Spirit  proceed  from 
the  Father,  yet  they  are  all  of  the  same  duration; 
the  sun  itself  is  three  in  one ;  there  is  the  round  orb, 
the  light,  and  the  heat;  each  of  these  we  call  the 
sun ! 

The  futility  of  such  logic  might  amuse  us  were 
not  the  theologians  so  earnestly  endeavouring  to 
make  reasonable  a  dogma  they  have  felt  it  their 
duty  to  accept.  Better  advised  are  those  who  call 
the  dogma  a  mystery  which  must  necessarily  re¬ 
main  so,  though  it  is  with  regret  that  we  find  them 
adding  that  its  incomprehensibility  proves  nothing 
but  that  we  are  finite  beings  and  not  God. 

In  reality  it  proves  that  a  very  troublesome 
dogma  was  formulated  at  Nicaea  by  finite  beings. 
Equally  finite  beings  helped  Athanasius  to  decide 


90 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


that  all  except  Trinitarians  would  without  doubt 
perish  eternally. 

But,  if  the  dogma  was  actually  so  important,  it 
would  seem  strange  that  Christendom  had  to  wait 
for  it  until  well  into  the  Fourth  Century.  No 
Trinity  figures  in  the  writings  left  us  by  the  Naza- 
rene’s  contemporaries.  As  his  idea  of  God  and 
his  idea  of  his  own  Messiahship  prevented,  no 
Trinity  figures  in  the  teachings  of  the  man  him¬ 
self.  It  is  true  that  a  proof-text  proclaiming  a 
Trinity  got  into  the  King  James  version  of  the 
New  Testament,  but  it  is  also  true  that  the  re¬ 
vised  version  omits  it,  because  when  the  revisers 
looked  for  it  in  the  oldest  manuscripts  of  the  New 
Testament  it  could  not  be  found  in  any  one  of 
them.  It  was  clearly  a  forgery  inserted  later  on 
by  a  zealous,  but  unprincipled,  Trinitarian. 

So  we  are  forced  to  conclude  that,  unless  Atha¬ 
nasius  was  misled,  all  the  New  Testament  writers 
have  without  doubt  perished  eternally  and  that 
the  Nazarene  has.  In  his  attitude  toward  this 
dogma  he  was  a  Unitarian. 

Not  content  with  formulating  a  Trinity,  the 
Fourth-Century  theorists  undertook  to  determine 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


9i 


what  was  going  on  inside  the  Trinity.  Did  the 
Holy  Ghost  proceed  from  the  Father  alone,  or 
did  the  Holy  Ghost  proceed  from  both  Father 
and  Son?  A  single  Latin  word,  filioque,  meaning 
“and  the  son”  was  enough  to  split  Christendom  in 
two;  the  Greek  Church  went  one  way,  the  Roman 
Church  the  other,  and  to  this  hour  a  single  Latin 
word  keeps  them  apart.  Inasmuch  as  no  Trinity 
existed,  so  large  a  quarrel  over  what  was  going  on 
inside  it  would  seem  to  have  been  needless. 

As  needless,  too,  is  the  handicap  afflicting  Chris¬ 
tian  missions.  Stripped  of  accretions  at  once  in¬ 
comprehensible  and  unimaginable,  the  Nazarene’s 
faith  might  long  ere  this  have  swept  round  the 
world  in  triumph,  winning  the  Brahmin,  not  mere¬ 
ly  the  Pariah,  of  every  race.  It  has  a  spirituality 
unknown  to  Confucianism,  a  purity  unknown  to 
Islam,  a  vigour  unknown  to  Buddhism,  but  in  all 
those  faiths  there  is  a  simplicity  unknown  to  post- 
Christian  Christianity — that  is  to  say,  the  Christi- 

1 

anity  that  began  loading  itself  with  Greek,  Roman, 
and  Jewish  irrelevancies,  the  moment  the  Naza- 
rene’s  successors  got  control.  Of  these  irrele¬ 
vancies,  the  dogma  elaborated  by  metaphysical 


92 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


theorists  under  a  pagan  emperor  sixteen  centuries 
ago  presents  no  obstacle  to  those  who,  never  having 
understood  anything,  are  not  dismayed  by  the  im¬ 
possibility  of  understanding  that.  Yet  it  presents 
serious  obstacles  to  minds  shrewd  of  discernment 
and  long  schooled  in  philosophy.  It  is  the  dogma 
they  hear  of  first.  Everywhere  they  torment  the 
missionary  with  their  derisive  and  unanswerable 
question,  “What  is  the  three-one?”  So  it  comes 
about  that  the  influential  classes  are  reached  last  if 
at  all. 

Happily,  Sabellianism  has  largely  supplanted 
Trinitarianism  among  our  Trinitarians  here  at 
home,  and  a  benign  heresy  it  is,  in  and  of  itself. 
But  there  occurs  a  sorry  enough  phenomenon  when 
they  recite  their  creed  in  church,  where  the  real 
dogma  stares  them  in  the  face.  There  are  hymns, 
too,  as  Trinitarian,  almost,  as  Trinitarianism,  but 
no  Sabellian  hymns.  Inevitably  comes  a  sense  of 
uneasiness  at  finding  our  lips  Trinitarian,  for  the 
moment,  and  our  convictions  not.  For  in  most 
minds  there  lurks  a  feeling  that  we  should  be  hon¬ 
est  in  church. 

Otherwise,  what  is  religion?  A  kind  of  poetry? 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


93 


A  realm  of  experience  where  truth  has  its  place 
when  it  suits  the  purpose  but  where  falsity  is  as 
welcome  or  more  so  when  it  suits  the  purpose  as 
well?  Such  questions  as  these  are  always  rising 
up  before  the  mind  wherever  modern  men  recite 
outworn  creeds. 

Much  has  been  said,  and  on  the  whole  very  ill 
said,  concerning  outworn  creeds,  but  it  remains 
to  explain  why  they  wear  out.  There  is  nothing 
mysterious  about  it.  Creeds  wear  out,  not  so  much 
because  they  get  old  as  because  people  get  new. 
Nature  affords  always  a  fresh  supply  of  people. 
By  the  same  token,  it  behooves  the  church  to  afford 
always  a  new  supply  of  creeds — either  that,  or  to 
regard  creeds  as  mere  interesting  snapshots  of  the 
past,  to  which  no  living  mortal  shall  be  asked  to 
subscribe. 

In  this  new  day,  we,  also,  are  new.  Not  by  the 
extremest  subtlety  of  intellect  can  we  repeat  the 
mental  processes  by  which  theorists  of  the  Fourth 
Century,  A.D.,  evolved  the  Trinity.  For  one 
thing,  modern  education  is  teaching  us  to  think 
consistently  and  with  clearness.  For  another,  the 
advance  of  knowledge  has  brought  with  it  a  con- 


94 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


viction  that  truth  is  reasonable.  But  chiefly  we 
have  come  to  feel  that  the  only  reverent  attitude 
toward  the  man  of  Nazareth  presupposes  a  wish 
to  see  him  as  he  was.  He  was  no  theologian.  He 
was  no  Trinitarian,  His  creed  never  wears  out. 
Even  to-day  he  is  newer  than  we  are,  and  whoso 
but  finds  him  shall  be  born  again. 


XIII 


CHRISTIAN  art— which  has  been  more  effective, 
even,  than  oral  instruction  in  fastening  theological 
ideas  on  the  mind — could  picture  only  what  it 
could  first  imagine.  It  could  not  imagine  the 
Trinity.  But  neither  could  it  forget  the  Trinity, 
so  we  have  numerous  masterpieces  portraying 
Father,  Son,  and  Holy  Ghost  in  relationship  as 
theological  as  the  exigencies  of  canvas  and  fresco 
permit.  In  such  paintings  the  Holy  Ghost  is  a 
dove. 

A  beautiful  legend,  of  high  poetic  interest  and 
charm,  was  the  basis  of  that  conception,  and  the 
symbol  carried  with  it  more  of  truth  than  does 
the  very  shadowy  conception  most  believers  now 
attempt  to  hold — and  reproach  themselves  for  not 
holding  very  successfully. 

In  their  thought  there  hovers  a  nebulous  being, 
who  is  ineffably  sacred,  as  a  sin  against  him  can¬ 
not  be  forgiven.  Why  must  he  remain  so  nebu- 


95 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


96 

lous?  Is  he  not  the  Third  Person  of  the  Trinity? 
Was  he  not  vividly  real  to  the  man  of  Nazareth 
and  to  his  pupils  and  to  Jewish  and  Greek  Chris¬ 
tians  in  the  First  Century,  A.D.? 

These  are  natural  questions,  and  in  answering 
them  it  is  as  natural  that  we  should  inquire  how  the 
Nazarene  came  to  speak  of  the  Holy  Ghost,  or 
Holy  Spirit,  and  what  he  meant.  The  idea  was  not 
new.  It  was  written  all  through  the  old  Jewish 
literature  he  studied  with  such  patience.  There 
he  read  passage  after  passage  that  mentioned  the 
spirit  of  God.  Old  hymns  reflected  the  idea.  Old 
prophetic  writings  did  the  same.  Old  chronicles 
introduced  many  an  episode  with  specific  recogni¬ 
tion  of  it. 

As  Jehovah  was  an  anthropomorphic  god,  with 
the  limitations  anthropomorphism  involves,  Jew¬ 
ish  thought  found  in  his  spirit  an  explanation  of 
his  influencing  the  affairs  of  men  without  visiting 
them  in  his  own  person.  When  it  was  not  an  angel 
who  accomplished  his  will,  it  was  his  spirit. 

Jewish  legends — altogether  crude,  some  of 
them — nevertheless  illustrate  the  conception  with 
remarkable  clearness.  For  example,  there  is  a 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


97 


particularly  crude  legend,  in  which  Balaam,  the 
Mesopotamian  trance-medium,  threatens  to  curse 
Jehovah’s  people.  Jehovah  is  much  concerned. 
At  all  hazards  this  fell  design  of  the  Mesopotamian 
trance-medium’s  must  be  frustrated.  So  the  spirit 
of  God  comes  upon  Balaam,  and  a  nation  is  saved. 
Instead  of  cursing  Jehovah’s  people,  he  blesses 
them. 

Again,  the  spirit  of  God  is  made  to  explain  un¬ 
usual  feats,  either  of  strength  or  of  courage  or  of 
skill.  When  a  young  lion  roared  against  Samson, 
the  spirit  of  the  Lord  came  mightily  upon  him, 
and  he  rent  him  as  he  would  rend  a  kid,  and  he  had 
nothing  in  his  hand.  When  the  enemy  were  ap¬ 
proaching  in  strength,  the  spirit  of  the  Lord  came 
into  Gideon;  immediately  he  blew  a  trumpet  and 
went  forth  to  war.  On  a  different  occasion,  Je¬ 
hovah  called  by  name  Bezaleel,  the  son  of  Uri,  the 
son  of  Hur,  of  the  tribe  of  Judah,  and  filled  him 
with  the  spirit  of  God,  in  wisdom,  in  understand¬ 
ing,  and  in  all  manner  of  workmanship,  to  devise 
cunning  works,  to  work  in  gold,  and  in  silver,  and 
in  brass,  and  in  cutting  stones  for  setting. 

But  by  no  means  crude  was  the  ancient  Jewish 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


98 

prophet’s  idea  that  a  prophet  owed  his  power  and 
his  insight  to  this  same  wondrous  spirit  of  God. 
When  filled  with  power  by  the  spirit  of  the  Lord, 
and  with  judgment,  and  with  might,  he  could 
prophesy  boldly,  charging  Jacob  with  transgres¬ 
sion  and  Israel  with  sin.  Meanwhile  a  Jewish 
hymn  besought  Jehovah  not  to  withdraw  his  holy 
spirit  from  his  servant.  In  the  whole  realm  of 
Jewish  liturgy  there  is  no  more  exalted  petition 
than  this — no,  nor  in  any  liturgy  whatsoever. 
Chanted  by  Christians  to-day,  it  expresses  the  very 
essence  of  religion,  and  seems  almost  to  have  been 
composed  by  the  man  of  Nazareth  himself. 

For  it  was  in  this  exalted  sense  that  he  accepted 
the  ancient  Jewish  idea  and  made  it  his  own.  To 
him,  it  stood  for  that  profoundest  reality — the  life 
of  God  in  the  soul  of  man.  If  a  man  sinned  against 
that,  there  was  no  hope  for  the  man.  One  could 
revile  the  Nazarene  and  be  forgiven,  but  whoever 
blasphemed  against  the  power  within  himself  mak¬ 
ing  for  righteousness  was  to  that  extent  a  spiritual 
suicide  and,  therefore,  beyond  forgiveness.  The 
harm  had  been  done.  It  could  not  be  undone. 

Moreover,  it  was  in  this  sense  of  a  divine  in- 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


99 


dwelling  that  the  rabbi  of  Nazareth  bequeathed 
his  belief  to  his  followers.  The  spirit  of  God  was 
to  be  their  comforter,  their  guide,  their  teacher, 
for  the  spirit  of  God  was  at  the  same  time  the 
spirit  of  truth.  And  it  was  in  this  sense  that  the 
more  discerning  among  his  followers  accepted  it. 
Paul,  speaking  for  such  followers,  could  say  that 
through  it  the  love  of  God  had  been  shed  abroad 
in  their  hearts,  for  so  it  had. 

Not  all,  however,  were  so  discerning.  Some 
even  went  back  to  the  crude,  ancient  Jewish  con¬ 
ception  of  the  spirit,  attributing  to  its  influence 
certain  hysterical  manifestations  that  would  other¬ 
wise  have  found  no  explanation  at  a  time  when  hys¬ 
teria  was  not  understood.  Those  early  Christians 
babbled — or  at  any  rate,  many  of  them  did — and 
this  babbling,  though  common  enough  among 
simple  folk  under  intense  religious  excitement,  was 
called  speaking  with  tongues,  as  the  babblers 
seemed  to  be  discoursing  in  an  unknown  language. 

Then,  too,  there  were  followers  of  the  Nazarene 
who  came  to  think  the  spirit  was  a  person.  One 
such  follower  wrote  a  biography  of  the  Nazarene, 
and  actually  transcribed  his  own  idea  of  the  spirit 


IOO 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


into  various  utterances  attributed  to  his  master. 
This  conception  was  radically  out  of  keeping  with 
the  old  Jewish  conception  of  the  spirit.  It  was  as 
radically  out  of  keeping  with  standard  early 
Christian  conceptions  of  the  spirit. 

Here  it  is  well  to  consider  for  a  moment  what 
kind  of  biographer  he  was.  In  the  series  collected 
for  us  his  biography  comes  fourth,  and  differs  from 
the  others  in  certain  of  its  characteristics.  It 
contains  no  parables.  It  is  almost  wholly  devoid 
of  instruction  bearing  upon  conduct.  It  is  tinc¬ 
tured  with  current  Greek  philosophy.  It  is  writ¬ 
ten  in  a  distinctive  style  aglow  with  enraptured  and 
adorable  mysticism,  but  here  and  there  defying 
close  analysis  of  fact.  Finally,  it  gives  a  different 
picture  of  the  man  himself — perhaps  a  truer  pic¬ 
ture,  yet  seen  always  as  through  stained  glass.  In 
other  words,  the  author’s  personality  colours 
everything  he  tells  us  of  the  man.  It  is  an  endear¬ 
ing  personality,  sweetly  saintlike. 

This  fourth  biographer  gave  theology  its  idea 
of  the  spirit  as  a  person  by  quoting  his  master  as 
using  the  masculine  pronoun  when  referring  to 
the  spirit,  though  he  also  quotes  his  master  as  say- 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


IOI 


ing  that  the  spirit  was  the  spirit  of  truth.  Neither 
the  one  citation  nor  the  other  is  exact.  What  the 
Nazarene  taught  and  what  the  majority  of  his  fol¬ 
lowers  clearly  remembered  that  he  taught  was  that 
the  spirit  was  the  spirit  of  God.  God  is  our  com¬ 
forter.  God  is  our  guide.  God  is  our  teacher. 
God  is  a  spirit,  and  they  that  worship  him  must 
worship  him  in  spirit  and  in  truth.  To  such  there 
is  a  commandment  given  by  an  early  follower  of 
the  Nazarene:  Quench  not  the  spirit. 

The  self-reproachful  believer  who  feels  a  cer¬ 
tain  vague  but  persistent  consciousness  of  guilt  be¬ 
cause  he  cannot  visualize  the  Third  Person  of  the 
Trinity  may  find  it  helpful  to  recall  that  the  Naza¬ 
rene  could  not.  Nor  can  any  one.  For  the  Holy 
Ghost  is  God,  and  no  other  exists.  Trinitarianism 
to  the  contrary  notwithstanding,  the  purest  sim¬ 
plest,  and  most  convincing  monotheism  is  not  de¬ 
nied  to  Christians. 

This  monotheism,  once  we  accept  it,  reinforces 
our  modern  view  of  nature.  We  are  learning  that 
in  reality  all  forces,  life  included,  are  one  force. 
We  are  finding  that  all  substance  is  in  reality  one 
substance,  and  to  recognize  that  matter  itself  is 


102 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


vibrant — that  is  to  say,  alive — which  means,  in  a 
sense  we  are  coming  to  appreciate,  that  spirit  is 
all  and  in  all.  So  we  need  no  longer  have  two 
orders  of  ideas,  one  applicable  only  in  the  realm  of 
things  visible  and  the  other  only  in  the  realm  of 
things  invisible.  The  same  order  of  ideas  applies 
to  both,  as  there  is  essentially  no  distinction  be¬ 
tween  those  realms.  All  truth  leads  back  to  one 
truth :  that  the  God  of  things  visible  is  likewise  the 
God  of  things  invisible. 

A  young  Jewish  rabbi,  though  so  Jewish  that  he 
could  mistakenly  believe  himself  the  Messiah  and 
so  Jewish  that  he  could  mistake  Jewish  legends 
and  Jewish  superstition  for  actualities,  had  never¬ 
theless  a  universality  of  mind  so  complete  as  to 
make  his  conception  of  God  wholly  consonant  with 
the  most  modern  scientific  thought. 

Hence  the  homage  we  pay  him.  The  more  our 
modern  knowledge  advances,  the  more  devout  the 
homage.  Little  though  they  realize  it,  savants  in 
laboratories  and  philosophers  in  university  quad¬ 
rangles  testify  of  him.  For  their  conclusions, 
which  he  anticipated  by  nineteen  centuries,  show 
how  great  he  was. 


XIV 


Well  after  dark,  so  as  not  to  be  observed  on  the 
way,  a  leader  of  the  most  conservative  Jewish  de¬ 
nomination  begged  an  interview  with  the  Naza- 
rene  one  evening  and  began  by  explaining  why  he 
had  come. 

It  was  because  of  the  Nazarene’s  reputation  as 
a  healer.  Though  not  in  need  of  treatment,  he  had 
been  greatly  impressed,  as  he  felt  that  no  one 
could  perform  such  numerous  and  astonishing 
cures  unless  he  was  at  the  same  name  a  teacher 
ordained  of  God.  Accordingly,  this  represen¬ 
tative  of  some  thousands  of  reactionaries,  who 
were  endeavouring  to  bring  back  not  only  a 
“blue”  Saturday  but  the  strictest  conceivable 
observance  of  “blue”  laws  in  general,  consented 
to  visit  a  radical  and  even  addressed  him  as 
Rabbi. 

Yet  vast  was  his  bewilderment  when,  in  the 
course  of  their  talk,  the  rabbi  told  him  that  only 

103 


104  THE  MAN  HIMSELF 

those  who  were  born  anew  could  see  the  Kingdom 
of  God. 

Finding  the  Puritan  so  utterly  nonplussed  by 
this  declaration,  the  Nazarene  in  his  turn  ex¬ 
pressed  bewilderment.  How  was  it  possible  that  a 
Puritan  and  Tory,  bent  on  reviving  the  laws  and 
customs  of  the  ancients,  should  have  failed  to  rec¬ 
ognize  that  the  ancients  themselves  believed  in  the 
new  birth?  Any  one  setting  up  to  instruct  his  con¬ 
temporaries  should  have  known  it.  If  the  figure 
of  speech  was  new,  the  idea  was  not. 

That  same  idea  had  been  David’s  when  he 
begged  God  to  create  in  him  a  new  heart.  It  had 
been  Isaiah’s  when  he  represented  God  as  promis¬ 
ing  the  faithful  a  new  heart.  It  had  been  Ezekiel’s 
when  he  represented  God  as  promising  the  faith¬ 
ful  a  new  spirit. 

Yet  there  is  much  to  be  said  in  extenuation  of 
the  Pharisee’s  ignorance.  Of  the  same  mental 
type  that  to-day  bestows  an  equal  authority  upon 
all  parts  of  an  ancient  Jewish  scroll,  conceiving  it 
to  be  inerrant  throughout,  he  recalled  numberless 
teachings  that  either  cancelled  the  idea  of  the  new 
birth  or  asserted  its  extreme  opposite. 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF  105 

Except  for  rare  glimmerings,  we  find  in  the  lit¬ 
erature  of  the  Jewish  ancients  no  intimation  that 
God  is  a  power  making  for  righteousness  or  that 
the  life  of  God  in  the  soul  of  man  works  a  recon¬ 
struction  of  character  so  complete  as  to  amount 
virtually  to  a  new  birth.  Jehovah,  a  magnified 
business  man,  was  a  bargainer.  Provide  him  with 
the  smell  of  burning  meat,  worship  him  in  accord¬ 
ance  with  an  exceedingly  high-church  ritual,  and 
obey  ten  thousand  taboos,  some  of  which  were 
moral,  and  he  would  give  you  long  life,  perennial 
health,  prosperity  in  your  ranching  ventures,  suc¬ 
cess  in  your  quarrels,  and  a  place  in  the  sun  for 
your  country  at  the  expense  of  the  rightful  inhabi¬ 
tants,  on  whom  he  had  no  pity.  Disobey,  and 
all  manner  of  calamities  would  befall  you.  But 
in  obeying,  you  were  not  helped  to  obey  by 
Jehovah. 

Such,  briefly  outlined,  was  the  idea  reiterated  in 
ancient  Jewish  scrolls  with  a  persistence  that  made 
it  dominant  in  the  minds  of  Jewish  Puritans  and 
Tories.  And  this  Pharisee  who  could  not  recall 
the  glimmerings  of  a  loftier  idea  could  recall 
numberless  intimations  of  a  still  lower  one.  If 


106  THE  MAN  HIMSELF 

Jehovah  was  seldom  a  power  making  for  right¬ 
eousness,  he  was  often  a  power  making  for  villainy. 

Once,  at  least,  he  came  dangerously  near  de¬ 
manding  human  sacrifice.  He  provided  a  substi¬ 
tute,  it  is  true,  but  not  until  the  father  of  the 
originally  proposed  victim  had  become  a  murderer 
at  heart.  In  Egypt  he  dulled  the  conscience  of 
Pharaoh  and  hardened  the  Egyptians’  hearts,  thus 
inspiring  the  opposition  he  was  to  get  himself  hon¬ 
our  by  defeating.  At  home,  the  greatest,  perhaps,  of 
all  the  prophets  asked  why  God  hardened  the  hearts 
of  his  people  and  made  them  err  from  his  ways. 

One  answer,  were  we  disturbed  enough  to  at¬ 
tempt  an  explanation,  would  be  to  say  that  the  old 
Jewish  theology,  such  as  it  was,  felt  the  need  of  a 
Satan.  You  can  read  the  Old  Testament  half 
through  before  meeting  with  Satan,  and,  conse¬ 
quently,  a  great  deal  that  might  better  have  been 
attributed  to  a  Satan  got  attributed  to  God.  In 
war  time  the  most  infamous  atrocities  were  perpe¬ 
trated  at  his  command.  And  we  are  told  that 
when  Saul  cast  his  javelin  at  David,  it  was  because 
Saul  had  been  taken  possession  of  by  an  evil  spirit 
from  God. 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF  107 

All  this  is  legend ;  granted ;  but  it  was  not  legend 
to  the  Jewish  Tory  and  Puritan.  To  him  it  was 
fact.  It  helped  to  mould  his  conception  of  God, 
and  did  it  so  effectively  that  there  was  no  room  in 
his  thought  for  an  idea  of  God  as  a  power  making 
for  righteousness.  Had  he  chosen,  he  could  have 
quoted  a  legend  in  which,  far  from  desiring  men 
to  become  perfect,  even  as  their  Father  in  heaven  is 
perfect,  God  is  said  to  have  resented  their  acquisi¬ 
tion  of  a  conscience. 

The  story  of  Adam,  which  is  told  us  in  our 
childhood,  and  which  we  give  little  reflection  to 
thereafter,  is,  nevertheless,  well  worth  re-examina¬ 
tion.  Adam  fell;  and  with  Adam  fell  man,  says 
a  theology  still  very  popular.  The  sin  of  the  first 
man  changed  his  whole  moral  nature  from  a  holy 
to  a  sinful  state;  which  changed  condition,  being 
hereditary,  has  entered  into  all  his  descendants! 
Says  an  old  couplet: 

In  Adam’s  fall, 

We  sinned  all. 

But  why  was  Adam’s  sin  so  monstrous?  He  ate 
of  the  fruit  of  the  tree  of  the  knowledge  of  good 


io8 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


and  evil.  He  had  been  forbidden  to.  But  why 
was  he  forbidden?  Right  in  the  text,  plainly 
stated,  is  the  reason.  By  eating  of  the  fruit  he  at¬ 
tained  a  knowledge  of  good  and  evil  and  became, 
to  that  extent,  godlike. 

Adam’s  acquisition  of  a  godlike  faculty,  then, 
was  the  offense  that  changed  his  whole  moral  na¬ 
ture  from  a  holy  to  a  sinful  state,  which  changed 
condition,  being  hereditary,  has  entered  into  all 
his  descendants ! 

That  the  barbaric  legend  was  picked  up  by  the 
Jews  during  their  enforced  sojourn  in  Babylon,  is 
probably  true;  but  what  concerns  us  now  is  the  in¬ 
fluence  of  the  legend  and  its  import  upon  the  mind 
of  the  Jewish  Puritan  and  Tory  who  came,  under 
cover  of  darkness,  to  interview  the  strolling  rabbi 
from  Nazareth;  alone,  it  was  sufficient  to  exclude 
from  his  philosophy  any  thought  of  God  as  a  power 
making  for  righteousness. 

To  him,  the  Nazarene’s  announcement  that  a 
man  must  be  born  anew  was  a  revolutionary  an¬ 
nouncement  destructive  alike  of  Jewish  orthodoxy 
and  Jewish  scripture.  No  one  he  had  ever  known 
believed  it.  If  now  he  remembered  that  here  and 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


109 


there  an  ancient  seer  believed  it  momentarily,  he 
was  well  aware  that  the  brief  illumination  had  had 
no  profound  effect.  Moreover,  he  resented  the 
announcement,  and  sought  to  entangle  the  Naza- 
rene  in  an  involved  theological  debate  over  it  by 
affecting  to  take  the  metaphor  literally. 

The  implied  challenge  failed  of  result.  He  was 
told  that  one  might  as  well  theorize  about  the  wind 
that  bloweth  whither  it  listeth.  Men  hear  its 
voice,  but  know  not  whence  it  comes  or  whither  it 
goes.  So  is  every  one  that  is  born  of  the  spirit. 

With  the  same  quiet  assertion  of  fact  and  the 
same  reverent  unwillingness  to  theorize  about  the 
fact,  the  young  teacher  bequeathed  the  idea  of 
the  new  birth  to  his  pupils,  and  they  to  theirs. 
Over  and  over  again  in  their  writings,  it  recurs. 
Speaking  from  experience  and  observation,  as 
well  as  on  the  authority  of  their  master,  they  de¬ 
clared  that  the  twice  born  walked  in  newness  of 
life.  The  old  things  passed  away;  behold,  all 
things  were  become  new.  Men  were  transformed. 
Their  very  minds  were  renewed.  If  it  could  be 
said  that  they  reflected  as  a  mirror  the  glory  of  the 
Lord,  it  was  because  the  divine  power  filled  them 


I  IO 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


with  new  life  and  a  new  godliness.  Begotten  of 
God,  they  were  new  creatures,  dead  to  sin,  and  par¬ 
takers  of  the  divine  nature. 

This  superb  conception,  as  real  as  it  is  superb,  the 
man  of  Nazareth  was  the  first  to  grasp.  Others  had 
touched  it,  but  only  with  hesitant  finger-tips  and  at 
rare  moments.  He  held  it  fast.  He  proclaimed  no 
mere  transitory  consciousness  of  the  divine  indwell¬ 
ing,  he  proclaimed  an  abiding  consciousness  so 
overwhelming  in  its  potency  that  there  emerged  in 
the  world  a  new  type  of  man,  the  Christian. 

This,  even  had  he  no  further  claim  upon  believ¬ 
ers,  would  justify  our  faith  in  him  as  the  most 
exalted  religious  genius  of  all  time.  For  the  new 
man  he  created  was  not  dependent  upon  human 
resourcefulness  alone;  the  life  of  God  was  in  him, 
making  for  righteousness;  he  had  been  born  again. 
And  to  the  twice  born  there  could  be  given  a  wholly 
new  ideal,  Christianity.  It  meant  laying  upon  the 
new  man  a  yoke  far  heavier  than  any  of  his  pre¬ 
decessors  had  borne;  actually,  the  new  man  was  to 
find  his  life  by  losing  it.  Yet,  because  of  a  new 
birth,  the  yoke  became  easy.  The  burden  itself 
became  light. 


■  r 


XV 

There  is  no  new  thing  under  the  sun,  and  yet 
there  is.  When  a  man  grasps  firmly  what  others 
have  but  touched  with  hesitant  finger-tips,  the 
thing  may  be  old,  but  the  grasp  is  new.  When  he 
sees  clearly  and  consistently  and  abidingly  what 
others  have  seen  and  then  refused  to  see,  the  vision 
he  commands  is  altogether  new.  In  old  Jewish 
writings  we  find  material  for  a  very  splendid  an¬ 
thology  of  aphorism  and  ascription  proclaiming 
the  fatherhood  of  God.  We  find  attempts  to  be¬ 
lieve  in  it.  We  find  eloquent,  poetic  assertions  that 
the  old  Jewish  writers  did  believe  in  it.  Yet  not 
until  the  prophet  of  Nazareth  grasped  and  held  it, 
was  the  idea  of  God’s  fatherhood  a  dominant  idea 
in  any  human  mind. 

The  same  ancient  poet  who  calls  Jehovah  a 
father  of  the  fatherless  pictures  him  in  the  same 
poem  as  eager  to  smite  his  enemies  through  the 
head.  In  another  poem,  after  speaking  of  Jehovah 


hi 


I  12 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


as  his  father,  his  God,  he  pronounces  him  a  God 
very  terrible  in  the  council  of  the  holy  ones  and 
to  be  feared  above  all  that  are  round  about  him. 
Prophets,  in  their  turn,  could  declare  that  he  had 
not  dealt  with  his  people  after  their  sins;  though 
their  sins  were  as  scarlet,  they  became  as  white  as 
snow;  yet  a  prophet  equally  as  authentic  could 
announce  that,  in  his  wrath  against  his  people, 
Jehovah  would  gather  all  nations  against  Jerusa¬ 
lem  to  battle.  By  divine  command,  the  city  was  to 
be  taken,  the  houses  rifled,  the  women  ravished. 

Whole  treasuries  of  superb  metaphor  were  ex¬ 
hausted  in  praise  of  Jehovah’s  loving  kindness  and 
tender  mercy.  For  example,  he  was  a  shepherd 
gathering  the  lambs  in  his  arms  and  carrying  them 
in  his  bosom.  But  the  fear  of  the  Lord  was  still 
the  beginning  of  wisdom.  No  Jew  could  overlook 
Jehovah’s  threat  to  punish  the  disobedient  by 
making  them  eat  the  flesh  of  their  own  sons  and 
the  flesh  of  their  own  daughters.  Nor  could  any 
Jew  forget  his  dealings  with  the  man  caught  gath¬ 
ering  sticks  on  Saturday.  Jehovah  commanded 
that  man  to  be  put  to  death,  says  the  chronicle,  and 
all  the  congregation  brought  him  without  the  camp 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


1 13 

and  stoned  him  with  stones.  Besides,  there  was 
Uzzah’s  case.  When  the  Jews  were  bringing 
back  the  sacred  box  containing  their  religious 
treasures,  the  oxen  drawing  the  cart  on  which  the 
box  rested,  stumbled;  to  keep  the  box  from  over¬ 
turning,  Uzzah  put  out  his  hand  and  steadied  it. 
The  account  is  circumstantial. 

Convoying  the  box  went  David  and  all  the  house 
of  Israel,  playing  before  the  Lord  with  all  manner 
of  instruments  made  of  fir  wood,  and  with  harps 
and  psalteries  and  with  timbrels  and  with  castanets 
rnd  with  cymbals.  When  they  came  to  the  thresh¬ 
ing  floor  of  Nacon,  Uzzah  put  forth  his  hand  to  the 
ark  of  God  and  took  hold  of  it,  for  the  oxen  tripped. 
Then  was  the  anger  of  the  Lord  kindled  against 
Uzzah,  and  God  smote  him  for  his  error,  and  there 
he  died  by  the  ark  of  God. 

David,  though  a  bloodthirsty  enough  barbarian, 
himself,  felt  that  here  common  justice  had  been 
outraged.  As  the  chronicler  goes  on  to  say,  David 
was  displeased  because  the  Lord  had  broken  forth 
upon  Uzzah.  However,  David  could  turn  Je¬ 
hovah’s  moral  obtuseness  to  good  account,  on  occa¬ 
sion — for  instance,  when  he  had  deeply  offended 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


1  x4 

Jehovah  by  taking  a  census  of  the  Jewish  people, 
and  was  given  his  choice  of  three  punishments: 
seven  years  of  famine  in  the  land,  or  three  days’ 
pestilence  in  the  land,  or  David  to  be  hounded  by 
his  enemies  for  three  years.  Reminding  himself 
that  Jehovah  was  merciful — he  had  often  called 
him  merciful  in  his  poems — he  decided  that  it 
would  be  better  to  fall  into  the  hands  of  God  than 
into  the  hands  of  men,  and  answered  the  Lord’s 
message  accordingly.  Whereupon,  Jehovah  pun¬ 
ished  David  by  killing  seventy  thousand  entirely 
innocent  Jews. 

At  this  point,  we  might  appropriately  pause  to 
remark  that  theology,  in  order  to  explain  why  this 
same  Jehovah  eventually  sacrificed  his  own  son  on 
our  behalf,  has  told  us  that  it  was  because  of  his 
divine  sense  of  justice — to  which  explanation  our 
rejoinder  might  be:  When  was  Jehovah  ever  just? 
But  we  have  not  recited  these  Jewish  folk-tales  as 
proof  that  Jehovah  was  grossly  and  habitually  un¬ 
just,  visiting  upon  offenders  a  penalty  out  of  all 
proportion  to  the  offense;  we  have  recited  them  as 
proof  that,  while  the  Jews  could  rhapsodize  elo¬ 
quently  over  his  loving  kindness,  his  tender  mercy, 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


1 15 

and  his  fatherliness,  they  could  dramatize  in  their 
folk-tales  a  deity  neither  kind  nor  merciful  nor 
fatherly.  After  that,  no  choral  ascriptions  in  tab¬ 
ernacle  or  temple  and  no  prophetic  ascriptions  on 
parchment  could  get  his  fatherliness  believed  in. 
Never  mind  what  poets  or  dervishes  said  he  was; 
folk-tales,  accepted  as  history,  said  the  opposite — 
and  too  often  the  poets  and  dervishes,  themselves, 
said  the  opposite. 

The  first  mortal  ever  really  to  believe  in  the 
fatherhood  of  God  was  the  Nazarene.  He  was  the 
first  ever  to  speak  of  God  constantly  as  his  father. 
He  was  the  first  ever  to  speak  of  God  constantly  as 
the  father  of  us  all,  and  to  bid  us  so  address  him 
in  prayer.  He  was  the  first  to  proclaim,  boldly 
and  unequivocally,  that  God  was  love  and  only 
love  and  could  never  be  anything  else. 

It  was  heresy.  It  denied,  completely,  the  old 
Jewish  idea  of  a  vindictive,  retaliatory  God.  So 
heretical  was  it,  indeed,  that,  on  one  occasion  when 
the  young  rabbi  ventured  to  set  forth  his  idea  of 
God’s  fatherhood  in  its  entirety,  he  told  a  story 
about  a  certain  man  who  had  two  sons,  the  younger 
of  whom  was  a  prodigal.  Not  a  word  of  explana- 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


1 16 

tion  followed  the  story.  Explanation  would  have 
been  dangerous,  for  the  father  in  the  story  showed 
no  justice  whatever — only  love. 

Even  to-day,  there  are  theologians  willing  to 
disregard  its  meaning.  A  standard  Bible  Diction¬ 
ary  lists  it  among  parables  illustrating  the  growth 
of  the  kingdom.  To  say  it  illustrated  the  divine 
repudiation  of  vindictive  and  retaliatory  justice 
would  be  to  invalidate  the  plan  of  salvation  worked 
out  by  theologians  who,  instead  of  following  the 
Nazarene,  have  followed  his  followers. 

Strangely  inconsistent  his  followers  were.  They 
would  discourse  about  the  father  of  mercies  and 
God  of  all  comfort,  who  comforted  them  in  all 
their  affliction,  that  they  might  be  able  to  comfort 
them  that  were  in  any  affliction;  yet  commonly 
they  mixed  with  their  teachings  concerning  God’s 
fatherhood  a  reminiscence  of  the  old  Jewish  idea 
of  God  as  a  grim  and  terrible  avenger,  thus  laying 
the  cornerstone  of  their  own  theology,  their  own 
elaborately  wrought  out  plan  of  salvation,  whereas 
the  man  himself  bade  his  little  flock  have  no  fear, 
for  it  was  their  father’s  good  pleasure  to  give  them 
the  kingdom.  He  had  no  elaborately  worked  out 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


1 17 

plan  of  salvation.  He  had  no  theology.  Except 
that  he  believed  himself  the  Messiah,  he  would 
have  been  a  Universalist. 

Instead,  he  taught  eternal  damnation.  John  the 
Baptist  had  taught  it,  and  to  him  John  was  Elijah 
reincarnated,  therefore  not  to  be  gainsaid.  Ac¬ 
cording  to  John,  the  wicked  would  writhe  in  un¬ 
quenchable  fire.  According  to  the  man  of  Nazar¬ 
eth,  all  nations  were  to  be  summoned  before  the 
throne  on  the  last  day.  But  who  was  to  sit  on  the 
throne  and  judge  them?  God?  We  are  clearly 
told  in  his  own  words,  specifically,  that  the  judge 

t 

was  to  be  the  man  of  Nazareth,  himself,  in  his  role 
as  Messianic  king. 

There  stands  the  prophecy.  For  nineteen  cen¬ 
turies  it  has  been  misread,  though  nothing  could  be 
plainer.  As  John  had  predicted  that  he  who  came 
after  him  would  gather  his  wheat  into  his  garner 
and  burn  the  chaff  with  unquenchable  fire,  so, 
with  an  immaterial  change  of  figure,  the  Nazarene 
declared  that  he  would  separate  sheep  from  goats 
when  he  returned  as  Messianic  king.  He  would 
set  the  sheep  on  his  right  hand,  the  goats  on  his  left. 
Then  he  would  bid  those  on  his  right  hand  inherit 


1 1 8  THE  MAN  HIMSELF 

the  kingdom  prepared  for  them  from  the  founda¬ 
tion  of  the  world.  Then,  also,  he  would  bid  those 
on  his  left  hand  depart  into  eternal  fire,  which  was 
prepared  for  the  devil  and  his  angels.  These 
would  go  away  into  eternal  punishment,  but  the 
righteous  into  eternal  life. 

•  Heretics  without  number  have  tried  to  reason 
away  the  horrors  of  damnation,  some  contending 
that  the  fire  was  only  figurative,  others  that  it  was 
not  eternal ;  and  many  of  them,  for  so  doing,  were 
subjected  to  torments  in  this  life  scarcely  less  cruel 
than  those  they  sought  to  spare  the  wicked  in  the 
next.  But  this  Judgment  Day,  which  has  terrified 
Christendom  for  nineteen  centuries — when  was  it 
to  be?  According  to  the  Nazarene,  early  in  the 
Second  Century,  A.D.,  at  latest.  For  not  one  of  his 
hearers  could  have  lived  to  a  later  time,  and  he  said 
that  some  of  them  would  see  it. 

Here  again  we  might  pause  to  inquire  why  the¬ 
ologians,  instead  of  elaborating  a  scheme  of  salva¬ 
tion  to  make  possible  our  escape  from  awful  doom 
on  that  day,  were  not  more  in  haste  to  assure  us 
that  the  day  had  long  since  gone  by,  quite  harm¬ 
lessly.  But  they,  in  their  turn,  would  then  be  free 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


1 19 

to  ask  us  if  we  think  evil  brings  no  consequences, 
and  we  should  find  ourselves  at  a  loss  for  evidence 
that  it  does  not.  Natural  law  would  be  against  us. 

Yet  is  natural  law  vindictive?  On  the  contrary, 
we  are  coming  more  and  more  to  realize  that  natur¬ 
al  law  is  benignant,  and  that  an  eternal  goodness, 
as  well  as  an  eternal  reasonableness,  pervades  the 
universe.  It  desires  not  the  death  of  a  sinner,  but 
would  have  him  turn  from  his  wicked  ways  and 
live.  Whom  it  loves  it  chastens.  For  natural  law 
is  God’s  will.  As  there  is  divinity  in  man,  so  there 
is  humanity  in  God,  our  Father. 

To  the  rabbi  of  Nazareth,  accordingly,  we  owe 
not  only  the  most  appealing  article  in  our  modern 
creed  but  the  profoundest  concept  in  our  philoso¬ 
phy.  If  one  spirit  is  over  all,  under  all,  in  all  and 
through  all,  so  that  in  that  spirit  we  live,  move,  and 
have  our  being,  then  the  name  for  that  spirit  is 
Love. 


XVI 


An  Italian  once  thought  he  could  reach  Asia 
by  sailing  his  caravels  westward.  He  was  mis¬ 
taken.  Yet  to  him  we  owe  half  of  a  world.  The 
mediaeval  alchemists  thought  they  could  find  the 
elixir  of  life  and  a  magic  stone  that  would  trans¬ 
mute  baser  metals  into  gold.  They  were  mistaken, 
but  to  them  we  owe  the  beginning  of  chemistry. 
Old  astrologers  among  the  Arabs  thought  they 
could  tell  fortunes  by  the  stars.  Again  it  was  a 
mistake,  yet  to  those  mistaken  star-gazers  we  owe 
the  beginnings  of  astronomy  and  to  astronomy  our 
conception  of  the  universe  in  space.  All  the  great 
innovators  have  been  mistaken.  We  judge  them, 
not  by  their  mistakes,  but  by  their  achievements. 

Small  indeed,  relatively,  were  such  achieve¬ 
ments  as  the  mere  discovery  of  missing  continents 
or  the  founding  of  mere  sciences.  In  asserting  that 
the  Nazarene  is  to  be  judged,  not  by  his  mistakes, 
but  by  his  achievements,  we  are  far  from  ranking 


120 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


I  2  I 


him  with  Italian  mariners,  mediaeval  alchemists, 
or  star-gazing  Arabs.  His  achievements  forbid. 
No  other  great  innovator  is  in  the  least  comparable 
to  him,  for  he  explored,  not  the  realm  of  things 
physical,  but  the  realm  of  things  spiritual.  He 
was  mistaken  about  his  Messiahship  ;sun  and  moon 
were  not  to  be  extinguished ;  stars  were  not  to  fall, 
no  preliminary  martyrdom  was  required,  nor  were 
sinners  to  be  plunged  into  lakes  of  fire;  yet  to  him 
we  owe  our  knowledge  that  we  are  God’s  children ; 
as  he  proclaimed  a  new  and  altogether  revolution¬ 
ary  idea  of  God,  so  he  proclaimed  a  new  and  alto¬ 
gether  revolutionary  idea  of  man.  He  was  the 
first  human  being  ever  to  understand  what  human 
nature  is. 

In  old  Jewish  folk-tales,  being  human  had  meant 
being  bad.  One  such  Jewish  folk-tale  relates  how 
Jehovah,  when  he  saw  the  wickedness  of  man  in  the 
earth  and  perceived  that  every  imagination  of  the 
thought  of  man’s  heart  was  evil  continually, 
drowned  practically  the  whole  race;  but  even  this 
failed  to  improve  man.  The  leading  survivor  fig¬ 
ured  immediately  in  an  affair  of  drunkenness  and 
scandal,  we  are  told.  As  time  went  on,  and  patient 


122 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


chroniclers  set  in  array  the  heroes  of  Jewish  piety 
— their  best — they  portrayed  bigots,  tyrants,  im¬ 
postors,  slave-holders,  polygamists,  adulterers, 
murderers,  and  gory  chieftains  innumerable;  a 
philanthropist,  never. 

A  Jewish  canticle,  said  to  have  been  written  by 
the  lustful  and  blood-guilty  monarch  whose  verses 
predominate  in  the  ancient  Jewish  hymn  book, 
declares  that  God  created  man  a  little  lower  than 
the  angels,  and  goes  into  detail  regarding  the  glory 
and  honour  with  which  man  is  thus  crowned.  The 
glory  and  honour  amount,  he  assures  us,  to  do¬ 
minion  over  all  sheep  and  oxen,  the  beasts  of  the 
field,  the  fowl  of  the  air,  and  whatsoever  passeth 
through  the  paths  of  the  seas.  This  by  no  means 
impressively  glorious  or  honourable  list  of  glories 
and  honours  is  led  up  to  by  loud  protestations  of 
astonishment  that  Jehovah  should  have  so  exalted 
man.  It  is  followed  by  an  outburst  of  praise.  That 
a  sublime  spiritual  heritage  is  man’s  birthright, 
and  that  a  sublime  spiritual  heritage  is  the  central 
fact  of  his  nature,  had  not  so  much  as  entered  the 
poet’s  thought. 

A  profound  moral  pessimism  pervades  the  Jew- 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


123 


ish  classics.  Conceived  in  sin  and  shapen  in  iniqui¬ 
ty,  man  is  by  nature  depraved,  they  assume;  there 
is  none  found  doing  good,  no,  not  one;  the  heart  is 
deceitful  above  all  things;  the  heart  of  the  sons  of 
men  is  full  of  evil — madness  is  in  their  heart  while 
they  live. 

These  melancholy  phrases  have  been  invaluable 
to  theologians  bent  on  proving  that  the  first  sin  of 
the  first  man  changed  his  whole  moral  nature  and 
that  the  changed  condition,  being  hereditary,  has 
entered  into  all  his  descendants,  ourselves  included. 
Equally  serviceable  have  been  those  phrases  to  the 
spiritual  terrorist. 

Fear  of  an  approaching  judgment  day,  despite 
the  clear  announcement  that  it  was  to  arrive  early 
in  the  Second  Century,  A.  D.,  at  latest,  is  still  dor¬ 
mant  in  the  popular  mind.  To  awaken  that  fear 
you  have  only  to  quote  the  ancient  Jews  on  the 
moral  nature  of  man,  apply  the  libellous  estimate 
to  your  hearers,  and  thus  induce  the  state  of  mind 
known  to  theology  as  conviction  of  sin.  Then 
down  your  carpeted  aisle  or  sawdust  trail  go  peni¬ 
tents,  quaking.  They  quake  to  good  purpose,  some¬ 
times,  and  conversion  is  real;  but  too  often  it 


124 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


appears  that  a  terrorist  runs  grave  risks  when  he 
attempts  to  make  permanent  modern  Christians 
by  means  of  an  ancient  Jewish  libel. 

Very  curious,  now  and  then,  have  been  the  de¬ 
vices  with  which  theology  sought  to  sustain  the 
libel.  If  you  pointed  to  the  virtues  in  a  sweet  and 
beautiful  character — the  character,  let  us  say,  of  a 
noble  but  unbaptized  saint — theology  would  de¬ 
clare  that  such  virtues  had  no  merit  in  the  sight  of 
God,  as  God  prized  only  the  virtues  attained 
through  faith  in  a  vicarious  atonement.  Indeed, 
time  was,  not  so  very  long  ago,  either — when  the¬ 
ology  announced  that  even  faith  in  a  vicarious 
atonement  might  be  futile.  Unless  God  had  fore¬ 
known,  predestined,  and  foreordained  a  man’s  sal¬ 
vation,  the  man  could  not  be  saved.  God  had  his 
elect.  He  had  chosen  them  from  the  beginning, 
before  the  foundation  of  the  world.  These,  and 
these  alone,  were  called. 

Many  a  ghastly  night  our  grandfathers  lay 
awake  in  torment  wondering  if  they  were  called, 
wondering  if  they  were  elect,  wondering  if,  from 
the  beginning,  God  had  foreknown,  predestined, 
and  foreordained  their  salvation.  According  to 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


125 

the  theologians  of  our  grandfathers’  time,  there 
was  small  chance  that  he  had.  According  to  the 
theologians  of  our  grandfathers’  time,  God  had 
foreknown,  predestined,  foreordained,  elected,  and 
called  the  vast  majority  of  his  children  to  writhe 
eternally  in  lakes  of  fire.  With  that  end  in  view 
he  had  created  them. 

Much  better  might  our  grandfathers  have  re¬ 
mained  awake  wondering  if  it  was  not  possible  that 
the  theologians  knew  altogether  too  much  about 
God — and  too  little  about  the  man  of  Nazareth. 
Their  theologians  were  not  following  the  man  of 
Nazareth  when  they  proclaimed  these  monstrous 
denials  of  divine  decency,  they  were  following  his 
followers,  who,  in  the  very  face  of  his  warnings, 
had  followed  the  false  teachers  he  had  predicted 
would  arise. 

Nowhere  was  the  Nazarene  rabbi  less  successful 
than  in  his  effort  to  eradicate  from  the  minds  of  his 
pupils  the  old  Jewish  pessimism  regarding  human 
nature.  He  rejected  it  utterly,  himself.  Never 
once  in  his  recorded  teaching  does  he  intimate  that, 
because  Adam  offended  Jehovah  by  acquiring  a 
conscience  and  becoming  to  that  extent  godlike,  all 


126 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


of  Adam’s  descendants  inherit  total  depravity. 
Only  one  type  of  man  seemed  to  the  Nazarene 
hopelessly  wicked.  That  was  the  type  of  man  who, 
having  seen  the  light,  prefers  darkness — in  other 
words,  the  type  of  man  who,  deliberately  and  of 
choice,  sins  against  the  divine  spirit  within  his  own 
soul. 

As  concerned  the  rest,  the  Nazarene  saw  good 
men  as  well  as  bad,  and,  in  at  least  one  of  his  re¬ 
corded  sayings,  implied  that  perhaps  the  good  men 
greatly  predominated;  for  a  single  unrighteous 
person  needing  repentance,  there  might  be  ninety- 
nine  righteous  persons  needing  no  repentance. 
Even  atrocious  sinners  were  perfectible.  There 
was  nothing  in  his  teachings  about  their  having  to 
be  foreknown,  or  predestined,  or  foreordained,  or 
elected,  or  called.  He  was  recklessly  untheologi- 
cal.  Never  having  heard  that  faith  in  a  vicarious 
atonement  was  essential  to  salvation,  he  went  on  for 
three  continuous  years  making  converts  by  the 
thousand  and  telling  them  they  were  saved,  al¬ 
though  nothing  capable  of  being  interpreted  as  a 
vicarious  atonement  had  as  yet  occurred. 

Recklessly  untheological,  too,  was  the  story  he 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


127 


told  of  the  young  prodigal,  who  repented  and  came 
home  to  his  father.  There  was  no  advocate  with  the 
father  to  plead  the  boy’s  case.  There  was  no  refer¬ 
ence  on  the  boy’s  part  to  someone’s  having  suffered 
already  the  punishment  the  boy  himself  deserved. 
There  was  no  struggle  between  justice  and  mercy 
in  the  father’s  mind.  Still  less  did  the  father  as¬ 
sume  that  the  boy  was  a  hereditary  criminal,  totally 
depraved.  He  had  repented  and  come  home, 
where  he  had  always  belonged.  It  was  in  the  na¬ 
ture  of  things  that  he  should  belong  there ;  he  was 
his  father’s  son. 

Not  only  in  symbolic  fiction,  but  by  example,  the 
Nazarene  strove  to  make  clear  his  faith  in  human 
nature.  By  preference,  he  addressed  his  message, 
oftentimes,  to  human  nature’s  least  promising  rep¬ 
resentatives,  saying  that  he  had  come  to  seek  and  to 
save  that  which  was  lost. 

He  went  further,  once,  and  called  a  notorious 
social  outcast  to  membership  in  the  company  of 
private  pupils  who  were  to  carry  on  his  work  after 
his  death. 

A  Jew  named  Levi  held  a  job  as  tax-collector 
under  the  Roman  administration.  It  was  a  despic- 


128 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


able  job — pro-Roman,  in  effect,  and  sullied  with 
graft — a  job  no  decent  Jew  would  touch.  Yet  there 
sat  Levi,  a  Jew,  gouging  his  compatriots  in  the  in¬ 
terest  of  their  oppressors,  until  one  day  the  man  of 
Nazareth  interrupted.  After  that,  there  was  an¬ 
other  Levi,  so  altogether  different  that  he  received 
another  name.  To-day,  he  is  seen  among  the 
Twelve  in  frescoes  of  the  Last  Supper,  and  known 
to  history  as  Matthew  the  Apostle. 

No  other  single  instance  more  superbly  illus¬ 
trates  the  Nazarene’s  faith  in  humanity.  It  was 
a  heterodox  faith,  but  invincible.  It  was  one  secret 
of  his  influence.  If  he  asked  men  to  believe  in 
him,  they  were  not  unaware  that  already  he  be¬ 
lieved  in  them.  And  it  has  been  one  secret  of  his 
influence  ever  since.  Tell  men  that  they  are  by 
nature  depraved,  and  they  will  justify  your  asser¬ 
tion  ;  tell  them  they  are  sons  of  God,  and  they  strive 
their  uttermost  to  justify  that  assertion.  This  is 
not  only  good  psychology,  it  is  good  scripture;  for 
we  read  that  as  a  man  thinketh  in  his  heart,  so 
is  he. 

If  the  Nazarene  was  the  first  man  ever  to  be¬ 
lieve  in  humanity,  he  was  not  the  last.  Idealists 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


129 


still  preserve  his  belief.  When  told  that  human 
nature  is  always  the  same,  meaning  that  human 
nature  is  essentially  evil  and  must  remain  so,  they 
reply  that  it  cannot  so  remain  because  it  is  not  es¬ 
sentially  evil.  Whereupon,  generally  amid  laugh¬ 
ter,  the  idealist  hears  that  he  is  a  dreamer,  far  ahead 
of  his  time,  for,  whether  consciously  or  not,  he  has 
been  echoing  the  thought  of  a  young  idealist  who 
died  on  a  cross  nineteen  centuries  ago. 

It  was  a  revolutionary  thought  then.  It  is  a 
revolutionary  thought  now;  yet  therein  lies  the 
hope  of  the  world. 


XVII 


Ask  a  hundred  Christians  at  random  what 
Christianity  is,  and  for  one  Christian  who  tells 
you  that  it  is  a  way  of  living,  there  will  be  ninety- 
nine  who  will  tell  you  that  it  is  a  way  of  believing. 
By  faith  we  are  saved,  say  the  vast  majority;  who¬ 
soever  believeth  shall  have  eternal  life.  And  yet 
they  hasten  to  add  that  good  deeds  are  as  essential 
to  salvation  as  if  the  promise  had  never  been  given. 
Hence  a  very  troublesome  matter  for  theologians; 
faith  saves  us,  and  at  the  same  time  does  not. 

To  believers,  this  self-contradiction  presents  no 
very  serious  difficulties,  and  such  difficulties  as  it 
does  present  they  either  disregard  or,  recognizing 
them  clearly,  seek  to  remove  them  by  quoting  an 
early  Jewish  Christian  who  said  that  God  would 
reckon  faith  as  righteousness. 

To  worldlings,  however,  the  self-contradiction 
seems  at  once  grotesque  and  immoral.  In  the  legal 
fiction  that  reckons  faith  as  righteousness  and  in 


130 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


131 

the  salvation  granted  as  a  reward  for  correct  theo¬ 
logical  opinions,  they  see  an  affront  to  logic  and  an 
infringement  of  justice — that  is,  if  they  think  keen¬ 
ly  about  it  at  all.  For  the  most  part  they  do  not. 
For  the  most  part  they  pass  it  by  with  what  we 
might  call  indifference  were  it  less  perceptibly 
tinctured  with  disdain,  and  so  we  find  in  the  aver¬ 
age  man’s  philosophy  a  conviction  that  if  he  “just 
does  about  right”  there  is  no  need  for  anxiety  re¬ 
garding  the  things  of  the  spirit.  Millions  of  men 
make  this  their  creed.  They  have  their  reward. 
In  their  calm,  self-complacent,  easy-going  rejec¬ 
tion  of  faith,  it  is  noticeable  that  they  just  do  about 
wrong. 

For  centuries,  now,  theology  has  preached  sal¬ 
vation  by  faith.  Here  is  the  result — a  result  that 
impels  us  once  more  to  ask  if  it  is  not  possible  that 
theology  knew  a  great  deal  too  much  about  God 
and  a  great  deal  too  little  about  the  man  of  Naza¬ 
reth.  He  never  preached  salvation  by  faith.  He 
denied  it.  He  never  implied  that  faith  could  be 
reckoned  as  righteousness.  He  said  it  could  not. 
In  a  memorable  speech  he  declared  that  when  he 
came  again  as  Messianic  judge,  he  would  have  no 


132 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF- 


mercy  upon  those  who,  having  disobeyed  his  com¬ 
mands,  tried  to  escape  retribution  by  proclaiming 
their  faith  in  him. 

Drowsy  readers  get  the  impression  that  he  was 
always  talking  about  faith,  so  often  does  the  word 
occur  in  his  biographies.  Reading  those  same  bi¬ 
ographies  more  alertly,  we  find  that,  with  rare 
exceptions,  he  was  talking  only  of  faith  in  its  rela¬ 
tion  to  healing.  He  cured  by  suggestion.  If  his 
patients  refused  to  believe  that  he  could  cure  them, 
suggestion  was  impossible.  There  were  villages 
where,  because  of  the  villagers’  hostility  of  mind, 
he  could  perform  no  cures.  On  the  other  hand, 
there  were  exceptionably  amenable  cases;  they  de¬ 
lighted  him,  and  of  one  such  case  he  remarked,  en¬ 
thusiastically,  that  he  had  not  found  so  great  faith, 
no,  not  in  his  entire  practice.  Meanwhile,  he  told 
his  pupils  that  any  doubt  they  might  harbour  as  to 
their  own  healing  power  would  limit  their  power 
to  heal.  When  they  reported  a  failure,  he  said  that 
they  had  failed  because  they  had  neglected  to  forti¬ 
fy  their  belief  in  themselves  by  fasting  and  prayer. 

It  was  natural  that  a  faith-healer,  training  pu¬ 
pils  to  heal,  should  comment  frequently  on  faith — 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


i33 


his  faith,  their  faith,  the  patient’s  faith — and,  as  he 
believed  that  faith-healing  was  in  reality  divine 
healing,  comment  frequently  on  its  religious  signi¬ 
ficance,  But  all  this  had  nothing  whatever  to  do 
with  so-called  saving  faith.  It  was  in  the  writ¬ 
ings  of  his  followers,  years  afterward,  that  faith,  in 
the  theological  sense,  attained  its  mountain-peak 
conspicuousness  and  importance. 

Even  then,  the  faith  they  glorified  was  another 
virtue,  quite,  from  the  mere  passive  acceptance  of 
dogma.  It  was  faith  active,  faith  heroic.  In  those 
days  words  were  deeds  and  opinions  adventures — 
more  so,  even,  than  during  the  Nazarene’s  brief 
career  of  personal  leadership.  Unlike  the  man 
himself,  his  followers  were  schismatics.  He  had 
sought  merely  to  renovate  Judaism  from  within; 
his  followers  established  a  new  religion  outside  the 
Jewish  fold.  He  had  sought  merely  to  liberalize 
and  elevate  the  Jewish  code.  His  followers  not 
only  repudiated  the  Jewish  code,  but  urged  others 
to  repudiate  it,  and  plotted  Judaism’s  complete 
overthrow,  all  this  in  defiance  of  Jehovah’s  warn¬ 
ing  that  apostasy  would  precipitate  an  orgy  of 
divine  frightfulness  in  the  course  of  which  rebels 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


134 

would  be  made  to  eat  the  flesh  of  their  own  sons 
and  the  flesh  of  their  own  daughters. 

Not  unnaturally,  Judaism  hit  back.  And  when 
Christianity  assailed  paganism  with  the  same  mili¬ 
tant  determination,  paganism,  too,  hit  back.  There 
were  mockings,  scourgings,  bonds,  imprisonment, 
stonings,  sawings  asunder,  slayings  with  the  sword. 
Believers,  of  whom  the  world  was  not  worthy, 
faced  woe  and  destitution,  skulking  in  deserts  and 
mountains  and  caves  and  holes  of  the  earth.  No 
wonder  their  eulogists  glorified  faith!  Faith,  they 
saw,  was  what  had  sustained  courage. 

And  on  its  intellectual  side  it  was  no  longer  the 
very  simple,  very  easy,  very  natural  faith  of  the 
Nazarene.  He  had  died.  His  followers  taught 
that  not  only  his  spirit  but  his  body  had  broken 
from  the  tomb  and  gone  up  into  the  sky.  They  had 
deified  him.  They  declared  that  he  had  always 
been  a  god.  They  theorized  about  his  relation  to 
the  Father,  his  relation  to  mankind,  and  the  mean¬ 
ing  of  his  death.  The  more  they  theorized,  the 
more  they  drifted  back  to  their  old,  pre-Christian 
habits  of  thought,  until  they  came  to  believe  that 
God,  who  anciently  demanded  strict  obedience  to 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


135 

the  code  in  exchange  for  his  benefactions  to  man¬ 
kind,  must  still  demand  something.  What? 

The  first  theorizer  to  suggest  that  faith  would  be 
a  fair  exchange  for  the  sacrificial  death  of  a  slain 
divinity  may  have  had  his  misgivings,  afterward. 
If  so,  it  was  then  too  late.  Everywhere  went  the 
news  that  that  heroic  and  intellectually  very  dif¬ 
ferent  thing,  faith,  would  satisfy  a  bargaining  God, 
who,  so  the  theorizers  went  on  to  say,  would  reckon 
it  for  righteousness  or,  at  all  events,  as  a  kind  of 
substitute  for  righteousness.  And  thus  was  Christi¬ 
anity  burdened  with  one  dogma  more. 

Among  the  Nazarene’s  followers  there  was  a 
Jewish  Christian  known  as  James  the  Just.  Re¬ 
membering  that  the  Nazarene  had  told  in  plain  lan¬ 
guage  what  would  happen  to  pretenders  who,  in 
the  last  judgment,  tried  to  substitute  faith  in  the 
Nazarene  for  obedience  to  his  commands,  James 
the  Just  came  out  with  a  pamphlet  attacking  the 
new  theory  and  clearing  up  for  ever,  had  theolo¬ 
gians  but  heeded  him,  its  confusion  of  ideas.  He 
said  believing,  in  and  of  itself,  was  a  small  matter 
— devils  did  that  much ;  the  faith  that  counted  was 
the  faith  that  bore  fruit;  by  works  a  man  was  justi- 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


136 

fied  and  not  only  by  faith.  Nearly  fourteen  hun¬ 
dred  years  later,  a  theologian  named  Luther  pro¬ 
nounced  this  pamphlet  an  epistle  of  straw. 

On  one  occasion — a  momentous  one,  since  by  ac¬ 
cident  it  laid  the  foundation  of  a  powerful  and  still 
very  illustrious  hierarchy — the  Nazarene  himself 
so  eulogized  faith  as  to  make  it  seem  tantamount, 
almost,  to  good  works.  Peter  had  announced  his 
belief  in  his  master’s  Messiahship.  In  reply,  the 
Nazarene  called  Peter  his  rock  on  which  he  would 
found  his  church — meaning,  of  course,  a  new  order, 
of  devotion  within  the  Jewish  fold.  But  observe. 
The  biographer  to  whom  we  owe  our  knowledge 
of  this  incident  takes  pains  to  emphasize  the  Naza- 
rene’s  astonishment  at  finding  a  pupil  convinced 
that  he  was  the  Messiah,  and  you  read  the  biog¬ 
raphy  more  than  half  through  before  coming  to  the 
story.  Until  that  momentous  occasion,  the  Naza¬ 
rene  had  gone  on  without  asking — and  apparently 
without  caring — who  and  what  his  own  pupils 
thought  he  was. 

Strange  enough  this  seems,  yet  it  was  in  keeping 
with  his  habitual  policy.  He  required  little  of 
faith.  Of  obedience  he  required  everything.  When 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


i37 


choosing  a  pupil,  the  question  uppermost  in  his 
mind  was  never:  Does  he  believe?  Instead,  he 
asked  such  questions  as,  Will  he  come?  Will  he 
follow?  Will  he  learn?  Will  he  obey?  To  illus¬ 
trate  the  only  plan  of  salvation  he  understood,  he 
told  of  the  prodigal  who  went  home;  the  boy  be¬ 
lieved  or  he  would  not  have  gone  home,  but  the 
great  point  was,  he  went.  Then,  too,  the  rabbi  of 
Nazareth  taught  that  obedience  was  a  teacher. 
They  who  did  the  will  of  him  that  sent  him  would 
soon  know  of  the  doctrine.  Before  learning  of  him, 
men  must  take  his  yoke  upon  them;  then  the  learn¬ 
ing,  like  the  yoke,  was  easy.  And  when  he  asked 
men  to  believe  in  him,  he  demanded,  not  a  mere 
theological  assent,  but  the  simple,  natural,  instinc¬ 
tive  fidelity  whose  root  and  whose  flower  is  love — 
and  whose  yield  is  character. 

Theologically,  what  was  there  for  them  to  be¬ 
lieve  in?  The  fatherhood  of  God?  That  is  not 
theology — theology  obscures  it.  The  sonship  of 
man?  Theology  obscures  that  also.  The  virgin 
birth?  The  deity  of  the  Nazarene?  The  Trinity? 
Salvation  by  faith?  Not  one  of  these  purely  theo¬ 
logical  fictions  had  he  ever  heard  of. 


138  THE  MAN  HIMSELF 

The  articles  in  the  creed  he  made  the  test  of  faith 
were  few  but  vital.  Chiefly,  they  propounded  such 
fundamentals  as :  Blessed  are  they  which  do  hunger 
and  thirst  after  righteousness ;  Blessed  are  themerci- 
ful;  Blessed  are  the  pure  in  heart;  Blessed  are  the 
peacemakers  ;Thoushaltlove  thy  neighbour  as  thy¬ 
self;  and  even,  Love  your  enemies,  Bless  them  that 
curse  you,  Do  good  to  them  that  hate  you,  and  Pray 
for  them  that  despitefully  use  you  and  persecute 
you. 

According  to  the  Nazarene,  salvation  was  obedi¬ 
ence.  Yet  obedience  presupposed  faith.  Only 
faith  would  enable  a  man  to  obey  such  commands 
as  these.  For  through  faith  alone  comes  the  life 
of  God  into  a  human  soul,  bringing  the  power  that 
makes  for  righteousness.  Only  by  recognizing  his 
own  sonship  and  the  divine  fatherhood  can  a  man 
attain  the  faith  that  transfigures  character,  and,  in 
its  moral  as  well  as  its  spiritual  result,  is  nothing 
less  than  a  new  birth. 

The  Nazarene  was  the  first  ever  to  proclaim  this. 
He  was  the  first  ever  to  comprehend  it.  He  was 
the  first  ever  to  apply  it.  To  a  faith  that  glowed 
always  within  him,  filling  the  whole  man,  he  owed 
the  splendour  of  his  matchless  personality. 


XVIII 


It  IS  still  orthodox  to  speak  of  the  Nazarene  as 
a  lonely  figure,  despised  and  rejected  of  men;  and 
so  he  is,  to-day.  Half-filled  churches  pay  him  an 
ever-diminishing  homage,  while  the  world  out¬ 
side  pays  him  none.  Persistent  misrepresentation 
of  the  man  by  his  own  followers  has  borne  fruit 
abundantly;  whereas,  when  the  man  himself  was 
known,  he  was  not  lonely.  Crowds — unmanage¬ 
able  crowds,  sometimes — swarmed  after  him.  Save 
by  a  minority,  he  was  neither  rejected  nor  despised 
during  his  lifetime. 

Four  biographers  have  reported  his  career. 
They  agree  in  portraying,  not  a  lonely  man,  not 
a  despised  man,  not  a  rejected  man,  but  incompar¬ 
ably  the  most  popular  man  of  his  day. 

Though  his  hold  upon  the  public  was  largely 
the  result  of  his  skill  in  drugless  healing,  he  had 
another  gift,  perhaps  even  more  attractive;  he  was 
an  artist — a  brilliantly  effective  teller  of  short 


139 


140 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


stories.  And  the  stories  he  told  had  something  un¬ 
usual  about  them.  You  listened,  aware  merely  of 
being  entertained.  Afterward,  they  made  you 
think.  You  got  to  pondering  about  God.  For 
days  and  weeks  you  pondered;  then,  if  you  were 
the  right  sort  of  person,  a  truth,  altogether  new 
and  surprising,  dawned  upon  you.  Instead  of 
feeling  that  it  had  been  given  you  from  without, 
you  felt  that  it  had  come  from  within. 

On  occasion,  the  story-teller  could  forget  his  art 
and  recite  aphorisms.  A  biographer  of  his  re¬ 
produces  an  open-air  address  delivered  on  a  hill¬ 
top  and  consisting  almost  entirely  of  moral  epi¬ 
grams.  It  was  not  a  sermon;  it  could  hardly  be 
called  a  lecture;  it  was  a  text-book  spoken  aloud. 
In  general,  however,  he  preferred  the  story  form 
— that  is  to  say,  the  parable.  Each  parable  he  ex¬ 
plained  later  to  his  pupils  in  private,  but  let  his 
audience  go  away  with  its  import  left  wholly  to 
their  own  deciphering.  Some  would  come  to 
understand ;  some  would  understand  at  once— as  he 
put  it,  they  that  had  ears  would  hear.  If  some 
were  too  dense  or  too  hostile  ever  to  understand — 
well,  so  be  it.  He  would  not  cast  pearls  before 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


I4I 

swine.  The  swine  would  in  that  case  turn  and 
rend  him  and,  by  that  very  act,  become  more 
swinish  than  before. 

But  the  principal  point,  and  the  point  chiefly 
controlling  his  custom,  was  the  extreme  unlikeli¬ 
hood  of  ever  impressing  truth  from  without.  Even 
if  now  and  then  a  dense  or  hostile  hearer  seemed 
actually  to  recognize  truth,  it  would  be  a  poor  rec¬ 
ognition,  like  assenting  to  a  ready-made  creed. 
Personal  beliefs  were  what  he  wanted  to  develop 
— beliefs  a  man  would  hold,  not  because  he  had 
been  commanded  to  hold  them  and  given  in,  but 
because  somehow  they  had  dawned  on  him.  He 
was  that  kind  of  believer  himself. 

Philosophers  say  there  are  three  types  of  be¬ 
lievers — the  rationalist,  the  traditionalist,  and  the 
mystic.  The  Nazarene  rabbi  was  no  rationalist. 
We  never  find  him  arguing  himself  into  a  belief; 
for  nothing  worth  the  proving  can  be  proved,  and 
he  knew  it.  If  he  was  a  traditionalist,  he  was  at 
the  same  time  daringly  independent  of  tradition, 
never  accepting  a  maxim  merely  because  the  an¬ 
cients  had  thought  it  true.  Invariably  he  tested  a 
maxim  by  his  own  sense  of  truth.  If  that  pro- 


142 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


nounced  it  false,  he  rejected  it,  ancients  or  no 
ancients,  and  was  disturbed  by  no  ecclesiastical 
assertion  that  a  leader  must  indorse  all  the  teach¬ 
ings  of  his  church  or  get  out.  Many  a  teaching  of 
Judaism  he  refused  to  indorse  and  many  a  teaching 
of  Judaism  he  attacked — but  stayed  in.  How  else 
could  he  hope  to  regenerate  Judaism? 

In  calling  him  a  mystic — for  so  is  every  one  who 
believes  that  the  sense  of  truth  is  the  test  of  truth 
and  upon  whom  truth  dawns  instead  of  being 
reasoned  out  or  borrowed — we  are  far  from  class¬ 
ing  him  with  the  spiritual  dreamers  or  vigil-keep¬ 
ers  in  whose  minds  truth  is  poetically  indefinite 
and  philosophically  nebulous.  He  showed  the 
exactness,  oftentimes,  of  a  lawyer,  and  nothing  in 
his  mentality  suggests  the  mysticism  that  delights 
to  induce  ecstasies  and  visions  by  mortifying  the 
flesh.  Visions  he  had  none.  Despite  the  well- 
known  legend,  he  was  not  given  to  fasting.  Unlike 
his  cousin,  the  Baptist,  he  came  eating  and  drink¬ 
ing,  though  he  permitted  others  to  fast.  It  was 
their  affair.  He  neither  taught  nor  practised  as¬ 
ceticism  in  any  form,  and  it  is  only  rarely  that  we 
read  of  his  withdrawing  alone  into  the  mountains 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


143 


to  pray  all  night.  A  fine,  vigorous,  open-air 
wholesomeness  marked  his  way  of  life.  He  was  a 
great  pedestrian.  So,  if  we  speak  of  him  as  a  mys¬ 
tic,  it  is  in  the  sense,  merely,  of  one  whose  beliefs 
come,  not  from  without,  but  from  within. 

All  genuine  beliefs  come  that  way.  They  dawn. 
Knowledge  from  without  or  hints  from  without 
may  suggest  them,  but  they  spring  into  radiant 
vitality  only  when  an  inner  light  makes  them  ours. 
Once  ours  from  within,  they  remain  ours.  In  the 
four  biographies  of  the  Nazarene  there  is  nowhere 
an  intimation  that  his  faith  was  ever  clouded  with 
misgiving.  Even  the  legend  of  his  temptation  in 
the  wilderness  says  nothing  of  any  temptation  to 
doubt.  His  dying  words,  though  often  quoted  as 
evidence  that  he  thought  God  had  deserted  him, 
meant  no  more  than  other  men’s  dying  words  do — 
that  is  to  say,  nothing.  They  prove  only  that,  in  a 
paroxysm  of  physical  torment  after  such  strain  as 
neither  mind  nor  body  can  withstand,  he  cried  out. 
The  words  have  no  significance.  No  such  victim’s 
last  words  ever  did  have. 

Among  the  young  rabbi’s  pupils  there  was  a  mys¬ 
tic  of  a  different  type,  more  nearly  resembling  the 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


144 

mediaeval.  In  talking  with  that  pupil — his  favour¬ 
ite  of  them  all,  we  are  told — the  young  rabbi  would 
speak  of  himself,  imaginatively,  as  the  true  vine, 
or  as  the  door,  or  as  the  good  shepherd,  or  as  the 
way,  the  truth,  and  the  life.  Long  afterward, 
when  the  pupil  wrote  a  biography  of  his  master, 
these  poetic  phrases  were  still  so  fresh  in  his  mem¬ 
ory  that  he  forgot  how  seldom  his  master  used 
them.  All  his  transcriptions  of  remembered  dis¬ 
courses  by  the  Nazarene  are  phrased  in  very  much 
that  style.  Broadly  speaking,  they  are  misrepre- 
sentative,  yet  even  here  we  find  a  reflection  of  the 
Nazarene’s  attitude  toward  faith.  In  his  free  use 
of  metaphor — at  times  it  was  free  almost  to  the 
point  of  license — he  showed  how  willingly  he 
could  leave  the  interpretation  to  his  hearers.  He 
was  not  dictating  truth.  He  was  suggesting  it. 
He  was  not  trying  to  see  how  much  could  be  im¬ 
posed  from  without,  but  waiting  to  see  how  much 
would  dawn  from  within. 

And  yet  this  same  young  rabbi  could  at  times 
be  dictatorial  to  a  degree  unheard  of.  He  would 
enter  a  synagogue  or  the  great  temple,  and  there, 
with  no  authority  save  his  own,  assume  the  role 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


i4S 

of  a  law-giver  greater  even  than  Moses.  His 
utterance  had  no  mysticism  about  it  then.  It  had  an 
awful  precision,  merciless  in  its  havoc  of  shams, 
hypocrisies,  and  sacred  sins.  No  such  conscience 
as  his  had  ever  been  seen  before.  No  such  voice 
had  ever  spoken.  The  righteousness  he  pro¬ 
claimed  was  a  new  righteousness — the  righteous¬ 
ness  of  a  new  humanity,  whose  prototype  he  was. 
He  no  longer  suggested.  Kinglike,  he  gave  com¬ 
mand,  and  bade  the  world  obey,  as  well  it  might, 
for  out  of  the  deeps  of  his  soul,  where  dwelt  the 
life  of  God,  came  the  new  laws  he  proclaimed,  and 
already  they  were  obeyed — by  the  king  himself. 

In  the  light  of  this  power  he  asserted  over  con¬ 
duct,  would  it  not  appear  that  his  emblem,  instead 
of  being  the  cross,  should  be  the  sceptre? 

The  cross  was  needless — the  more  tragic  on  that 
account,  and  the  more  pitiful,  but  representing 
only  the  Nazarene’s  mistaken  idea  of  his  Messiah- 
ship.  Yet  for  lack  of  his  sceptre  the  world  is  a  lost 
world  still.  No  sooner  had  the  Nazarene  found 
martyrdom  than  his  followers  began  erecting 
mountains  of  metaphysical  speculation  upon  the 
mystery  of  his  death  and  reflecting  little  if  at  all 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


146 

upon  the  great,  outstanding  fact  of  his  life — 
namely,  that  he  demanded  obedience.  They  had 
no  craven  motive  in  so  doing— no  suspicion  that 
a  time  would  soon  come  when,  though  his  cross 
surmounted  the  spires  of  Christendom,  his  sceptre 
would  be  smitten  from  his  hand. 

Just  that  has  occurred.  And  just  that  is  why 
a  majority  of  mankind  in  every  generation  has 
scorned  Christianity.  It  has  its  Churches  of  the 
Advent,  its  Churches  of  the  Redeemer,  its  Churches 
of  the  Trinity,  but  as  yet  no  Church  of  the  Obedi¬ 
ence.  The  Church  of  the  Obedience,  when  it 
comes,  will  not  be  mourning  the  plight  of  a  de¬ 
spised  and  rejected  Nazarene,  nor  will  men  despise 
and  reject  the  Church  of  the  Obedience. 


XIX 


Like  other  rabbis,  the  Nazarene  was  a  lawyer — 
that  is  to  say,  an  authority  on  jurisprudence  be¬ 
cause  a  profound  student  of  old  Jewish  legal  works. 
We  have  access  to  them.  Quite  as  if  nineteen  cen¬ 
turies  had  not  gone  by,  we  can  follow  him  in  his 
studies,  reading  what  the  man  himself  read,  en¬ 
countering  the  same  legal  absurdities,  the  same  le¬ 
gal  monstrosities,  the  same  legal  futilities  and  inep¬ 
titudes. 

For  example,  we  learn  in  those  ancient  statute 
books  that  Jehovah  pronounced  it  a  crime  to  mar 
the  corners  of  one’s  beard.  We  find  him  declaring 
it  as  criminal  to  wear  cloth  of  mingled  wool  and 
linen  or  to  plough  with  an  ox  and  a  donkey  togeth¬ 
er.  We  come  upon  his  legally  prescribed  cure  for 
the  leprosy  of  walls  and  of  garments.  Still  more 
surprising,  we  note  that  his  list  of  outlawed  fowls 
includes  the  bat.  The  bat,  we  are  told,  is  a  fowl 
no  Jew  may  eat. 


147 


148  THE  MAN  HIMSELF 

-4 

Ten  laws,  now  recited  in  Christian  churches, 
were  said  to  have  been  first  promulgated  on  a 
mountain  top  and  afterward,  according  to  the 
story,  chiselled  on  the  slabs  of  stone  by  Jehovah’s 
own  finger.  One  of  the  ten  laws  prohibited  art, 
another  forbade  work  on  Saturday,  two  condone 
slavery,  and  the  Jehovah  held  responsible  for  all 
ten  declares  himself  a  polytheist,  jealous  of  other 
gods. 

It  is  true  that,  soon  after  prohibiting  art,  Je¬ 
hovah  is  found  ordering  seraphs  of  beaten  gold  for 
his  sanctuary  and  blue,  purple,  and  scarlet  pome¬ 
granates  to  adorn  the  skirts  of  his  clergymen.  Yet 
the  edict  against  art  is  explicit  and  all-inclusive; 
Jews  were  not  only  forbidden  to  bow  down  to 
works  of  art  after  they  had  made  them;  they  were 
forbidden  to  make  them;  there  was  to  be  no  graven 
image  nor  the  likeness  of  any  form  that  was  in 
heaven  above  or  that  was  in  the  earth  beneath 
or  that  was  in  the  water  supposed  to  exist  under 
the  earth.  A  single  edict  throttled  the  art  im¬ 
pulse  of  an  entire  race.  Except  for  certain  em¬ 
bellishments  of  worship,  the  Jews  had  no  sculpture. 
They  never  tolerated  painting.  Our  standard 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


149 


portrait  of  the  Nazarene,  consequently,  is  based, 
not  upon  an  early  artist’s  conception,  but  upon  a 
descriptive  passage  in  one  of  several  manifestly 
spurious  biographies. 

That  portrait  appears  now  in  many  a  stained- 
glass  window,  and  beneath  it  Christians  recite  the 
law  prohibiting  art.  They  recite  it  on  Sunday, 
and  in  the  next  breath  recite  a  law  hallowing  Sat¬ 
urday,  though  Saturday  they  profane.  Then,  too, 
they  recite  laws  definitely  mentioning  slaves  but 
nowhere  condemning  slavery.  Slaves  must  be 
given  a  day  off  on  Saturday.  No  man  must  covet 
his  neighbour’s  slaves,  be  they  manservants  or 
maidservants.  Both  are  spoken  of.  They  are 
mentioned  along  with  cattle. 

Few  Christians  take  too  seriously  the  statutes 
prohibiting  art,  hallowing  Saturday,  condoning 
slavery  and  pronouncing  God  a  polytheist,  jeal¬ 
ous  of  rival  gods.  Even  among  conservatives  we 
find  rudiments,  at  least,  of  a  liberalism  first  taught 
by  old  Jewish  dervishes  and  then  obscured  and  fi¬ 
nally,  in  the  precepts  of  the  Nazarene,  blazing  up 
into  a  spirit  new  upon  earth  and  altogether  revolu¬ 
tionary.  Despite  his  belief  that  he  had  come,  not 


150 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


to  destroy,  but  to  fulfil,  he  was  the  most  iconoclastic 
young  jurist  in  all  history. 

The  law  needed  him.  While  it  would  be  pos¬ 
sible  to  discover  in  it  the  material  for  a  really 
noble  and  inspiring  system  of  ethics,  Jewish  law 
was  mainly  a  priest  ridden  law,  over-emphasizing 
trivialities,  under-emphasizing  fundamentals,  and 
straining  out  gnats  while  swallowing  camels. 
Now  and  then  the  things  strained  out  belonged  out, 
but  the  ability  to  overlook  serious  ethical  consider¬ 
ations  remained.  For  instance,  there  was  a  statute 
directing  what  one  should  do  with  an  animal  that 
had  died  a  natural  death.  It  must  not  be  eaten. 
So  far,  excellent,  though  few  of  us  would  see  reli¬ 
gion  in  not  eating  it;  but  what  comes  next  in  that 
statute?  Lo  and  behold,  thou  mayest  sell  it  to  the 
foreigner! 

This  sort  of  thing  infuriated  the  Nazarene. 
While  he  never  attacked  the  Jewish  dietary  code 
and  while  he  never  attacked  ceremonialism  merely 
for  being  ceremonial,  he  rose  up  in  indignation 
whenever  he  found  propriety  substituted  for  prin¬ 
ciple.  That,  so  he  perceived,  was  the  common 
Jewish  defect.  For  centuries,  now,  the  law  had 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


151 

been  in  operation.  It  had  not  produced  saints. 
Constantly  and  by  quantity-production  it  had 
turned  out  humbugs,  and  the  thing  was  still  going 
on. 

All  around  him  the  Nazarene  saw  Jews  sancti¬ 
moniously  fussy  about  not  eating  this  and  not  eat¬ 
ing  that,  scrupulous  in  the  religious  niceties  of 
beard-trimming,  dress  and  spiritual  etiquette — 
Jews  who  had  never  in  their  lives  worn  wool 
mixed  with  linen,  or  hitched  an  ox  and  a  donkey 
to  the  same  plough,  or  treated  walls  for  leprosy 
in  the  wrong  manner,  or  broken  Saturday,  or 
made  a  graven  image  or  the  likeness  to  any  form 
that  was  in  heaven  above  or  that  was  in  the 
earth  beneath  or  that  was  in  the  water  be¬ 
neath  the  earth,  but  who  were  scoundrels  for  all 
that. 

A  great  figure  they  were  cutting,  some  of  them. 
If  piety  required  a  Jew  to  fast,  they  would  fast 
twice  as  often  as  was  stipulated  and  go  about  with 
a  famished  look  on  their  faces,  courting  admiration 
and  getting  it.  If  piety  required  a  Jew  to  wear  a 
border  on  his  robe,  they  wore  borders  double  the 
stipulated  width.  If  piety  required  a  Jew  to  wear 


152 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


a  scripture  text  tied  around  his  head,  they  tied 
theirs  on  with  extra  broad  straps.  If  piety  re¬ 
quired  a  Jew  to  give  a  share  of  his  income  to  the 
church,  they  tithed  even  the  littlest  herbs  and  seeds 
in  their  gardens,  and  bragged  about  it  afterward. 
In  the  meeting-house  they  were  always  conspicu¬ 
ous  in  front  seats,  on  the  street  always  hankering 
for  salaams. 

There  was  no  comic  press  in  those  days.  There 
were  no  music-halls.  There  was  little  joking.  A 
more  humourless  race  than  the  Jews  of  the  First 
Century,  A.D.,  never  lived.  Instead  of  laughing 
at  these  spiritual  swaggerers,  they  ko-towed  to 
them,  hung  upon  their  lips,  and  abetted  their  en¬ 
deavour  to  run  the  country. 

The  Nazarene  well  knew  in  what  direction  they 
sought  to  run  it— back  to  Moses  and  Jehovah,  or, 
rather,  back  to  a  travesty  of  Moses  and  back  to  a 
caricature  of  Jehovah.  For  they  were  not  content 
with  the  law,  even  at  its  worst.  In  building  what 
they  called  a  fence  around  it,  they  ordered  new 
fussinesses,  new  boredoms,  new  stupidities  until, 
had  they  had  their  way,  they  would  have  produced 
not  only  religious  cranks  throughout  Palestine  but 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


i53 

arch-hypocrites  throughout  Palestine  into  the  bar¬ 
gain. 

At  the  risk  of  his  life,  and  barely  escaping  with 
it  at  times,  the  young  jurist  from  Nazareth  at¬ 
tacked  them.  Blind  leaders  of  the  blind,  they  were 
frauds,  he  said.  They  were  like  white-washed 
tombs.  They  were  like  cups  and  dishes  clean  out¬ 
side,  foul  within.  Moreover,  they  were  a  menace. 
They  had  taken  away  the  key  of  knowledge.  They 
had  not  entered  in,  themselves,  and  those  who  were 
entering  in,  they  hindered.  Changing  the  figure  of 
speech,  he  said  they  bound  heavy  burdens  and 
grievous  to  be  borne  and  laid  them  on  men’s  shoul¬ 
ders — burdens  they  themselves  would  not  lift  a 
finger  to  move.  To  their  faces  he  said  it.  Across 
a  dinner-table  once,  he  talked  in  this  vein  to  a 
Pharisee  whose  guest  he  was. 

Publicly,  he  warned  his  hearers  against  the 
leaven — or,  as  moderns  say,  the  microbe — of  Phar¬ 
isaism.  The  contagion,  once  it  got  hold  of  a  man, 
would  spread  all  through  him  until  he,  too,  would 
be  valuing  letter  above  spirit,  prizing  form  more 
than  substance,  and  letting  rites  and  ceremonies 
and  observances — mere  trifles  of  religious  etiquette 


iS4 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


and  legal  punctilio — become  a  substitute  for  mercy, 
honesty,  and  straight  living. 

For  the  first  time  in  history  a  lawyer  had  seen 
through  the  law — not  only  through  the  Jewish 
legal  system,  but  through  all  legal  systems  whatso¬ 
ever — yes,  and  through  all  legalistic  systems  of 
religion.  At  best,  they  merely  skim  the  surface 
of  morality.  In  dealing  with  sin,  they  treat  symp¬ 
toms,  not  the  disease.  They  interest  themselves  in 
outward  behaviour  invariably;  in  the  springs  of 
action  never. 

Others  before  the  Nazarene  had  denounced  hy¬ 
pocrisy  and,  in  occasional  tirades  against  it,  urged 
an  inner  righteousness.  An  old  Jewish  dervish 
once  made  Jehovah  command  his  people  to  rend 
their  hearts,  not  their  garments.  A  dervish  as  sin¬ 
cere  had  made  Jehovah  say  he  was  disgusted  with 
vain  oblations,  new  moon  and  sabbath,  the  calling 
of  assemblies,  and  wanted  no  longer  the  combina¬ 
tion  of  iniquity  and  the  solemn  assembly.  But 
never  once  until  the  lawyer  of  Nazareth  detected 
it,  had  any  Jewish  thinker  recognized  that  the  law 
itself  was  at  fault  and  that  the  fault  consisted  in 
its  attempts  to  impose  righteousness  from  without. 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


i55 

Yet  the  lawyer  of  Nazareth  had  promised  not  to 
destroy  the  law.  In  so  far  as  his  attitude  toward  it 
was  concerned,  he  kept  his  word.  For  his  was  al¬ 
ways  the  Messianic  attitude.  Convinced  that  the 
entire  mundane  order  of  things  would  soon  be 
swept  away,  he  saw  no  object  in  hastening  the 
downfall  of  any  institution,  whether  religious  or 
legal.  He  was  coming  back,  within  a  very  few 
years,  to  judge  the  world  and  reign.  Meanwhile, 
with  tireless,  self-sacrificing,  affectionate  devotion, 
he  was  preparing  men  for  the  great  and  terrible 
day  of  the  Lord  by  teaching  them  how  to  live.  In 
its  aim,  his  teaching  was  not  revolutionary.  It 
attacked  no  institution.  It  sought  to  found  none. 
It  was  addressed  solely  to  individuals. 

In  the  heart  of  the  individual,  however,  it 
worked  such  a  revolution  as  had  never  been  heard 
of  before.  Individuals  saw  the  Nazarene  break 
the  Sabbath,  heard  him  say  that  the  Sabbath  was 
made  for  man,  not  man  for  the  Sabbath.  They  saw 
him  eat  with  unwashen  hands,  though  the  Phari¬ 
sees  called  it  a  crime.  They  heard  him  say  that  a 
man  was  not  defiled  by  the  food  that  went  into  his 
mouth,  but  by  the  words  that  came  out  of  his 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


156 

mouth.  They  noticed  that  all  his  teachings  empha¬ 
sized,  not  externals,  not  observances,  but  the  inner¬ 
most  righteousness  of  motive.  He  was  the  first  to 
address  conscience  and  conscience  only,  the  first  to 
declare  that,  if  the  eye  be  single,  the  whole  body 
shall  be  full  of  light.  The  philosophy  of  the  law 
was  summed  up  in  three  words — From  without, 
in.  This  stranger  announced  a  new  philosophy, 
likewise  summed  up  in  three  words— From  within, 
out. 

Marvellous  was  the  result.  Men  who  all  their 
days  had  wandered,  stumbling,  in  a  labyrinth  of 
dry  legalism,  suddenly  found  in  him  the  way,  the 
truth,  and  the  life;  for  he  told  them  that  two  brief 
commandments  epitomized  the  whole  of  law,  the 
whole  of  religion.  One  bade  them  love  the  Lord 
their  God  with  all  their  heart,  and  with  all  their 
soul,  and  with  all  their  mind,  and  with  all  their 
strength.  The  other  bade  them  love  their  neigh¬ 
bour  as  themselves. 

To  Jews  in  the  First  Century,  A.D.,  this  brought 
a  shock — of  amazement,  first,  and  then  of  beauty. 
It  was  new.  It  was  a  revelation.  And  with  it 
came  that  teaching  of  his  about  the  new  birth  and 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


157 


about  religion  as  the  life  of  God  in  the  soul  of  man 
and  about  God  as  a  power  making  for  righteous¬ 
ness.  No  wonder  they  adored  the  Nazarene!  In 
a  sense  as  entirely  human  and  natural  as  it  is  noble, 
he  was  their  liberator,  their  redeemer. 


XX 


Christian  art  would  persuade  us  that  the  Naza- 
rene  never  smiled.  In  all  his  portraits,  he  is  grave 
— the  man  of  sorrows  acquainted  with  grief,  the 
wanderer  who  had  not  where  to  lay  his  head. 
Even  his  biographers  give  that  impression. 
Though  we  read  that  he  wept,  we  are  never  told 
that  he  smiled. 

Yet  those  same  biographers  describe  his  popu¬ 
larity,  his  success  in  healing,  and  the  fascination 
he  had  for  little  children;  whereas,  children  are 
not  drawn  to  men  who  never  smile,  nor  are  healers 
depressed,  nor  can  a  joyless  temperament  win 
popularity.  According  to  the  account  given  us 
by  his  favourite  pupil,  he  now  and  then  spoke  of 
the  great  joy  that  was  in  him.  Joy  wears  a  smile, 
and  can  laugh. 

But  laughter  was  frowned  upon  among  the  Jews 
of  the  First  Century,  A.D.  They  remembered  too 

well  the  ancient  pessimist  who,  though  admitting 

158 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


i59 


that  there  was  a  time  to  laugh,  implied  that  the 
time  would  never  come;  in  laughter  he  saw  a  kind 
of  madness,  and  much  preferred  gloom.  So  we 
find  in  the  Nazarene’s  biographers  an  effort,  al¬ 
ways,  to  hide  his  humour — an  effort  not  invariably 
successful.  Despite  reticence  and  concealments  on 
their  part,  the  man  himself  shines  through,  and  in 
one  situation,  at  least,  they  unconsciously  reveal 
him  as  not  only  possessing  a  keen  sense  of  the  ab¬ 
surd,  but  as  possessing  a  genius  for  making  shams 
and  hypocrisies  absurd. 

He  was  preaching,  at  the  time,  and,  in  the  course 
of  his  remarks,  touched  upon  Pharisaism.  He  be¬ 
gan,  startlingly  enough,  by  declaring  that  Pharisa¬ 
ism,  far  from  demanding  too  much  righteousness, 
demanded  too  little.  Then,  with  the  skill  of  an 
inspired  satirist,  he  adopted  the  Pharisee’s  tech¬ 
nique.  They  were  piously  building  a  fence  around 
the  law.  Very  well,  he,  too,  would  build  a  fence. 
When  built,  it  would  make  them  ridiculous. 

This  he  proceeded  to  do  without  announcing  his 
intention.  Solemnly  he  quoted  the  ancients,  in 
true  Pharisee  style,  but,  instead  of  picking  out  laws 
bearing  upon  ritual  and  observance  and  the  thou- 


160  THE  MAN  HIMSELF 

sand  and  one  grotesque  niceties  of  spiritual  dandy¬ 
ism,  as  they  did,  he  picked  out  laws  bearing  upon 
morality.  Still  keeping  to  their  own  method,  he 
built  a  fence  around  those. 

We  are  not  told  that  his  hearers  laughed.  The 
biographer  who  reports  him  seems  to  have  missed 
the  point,  himself,  and  there  are  readers  who  go 
on  missing  it  even  to-day.  Yet  what  a  master 
stroke  of  satire  it  was! 

He  quoted  the  ancient  law  against  murder,  and 
built  a  fence  around  it  by  saying  that  whoever  was 
angry  with  his  brother  deserved  punishment.  He 
quoted  the  ancient  law  against  adultery,  and  built 
a  fence  around  it  by  saying  that  lust  was  adultery. 
He  quoted  the  ancient  divorce  law,  and  built  a 
fence  around  it  by  forbidding  divorce  save  for  one 
cause  only.  He  quoted  the  ancient  law  against  per¬ 
jury,  and  built  a  fence  around  it  by  forbidding  all 
oaths.  He  quoted  the  ancient  law  that  bade  men 
love  their  neighbours,  and  built  a  fence  around  that 
by  commanding  them  to  love  even  their  enemies. 

Grotesque  enough  the  fence  of  the  reactionaries 
looked,  then,  and  grotesque  enough  the  reaction¬ 
aries  looked ! 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF  161 

All  great  satirists  have  been  philosophers,  and 
philosophers  are  noted  for  two  very  rare  and  splen¬ 
did  gifts.  One  of  them  is  insight.  The  other  is 
moderation.  Insight  enabled  the  Nazarene  to  per¬ 
ceive  clearly  that  the  whole  thing  wrong  with 
Pharisaism  and  with  ceremonialism  and  with  Jew¬ 
ish  legalism  was  its  emphasis  upon  externals,  its 
failure  to  deal  with  motive.  Moderation  enabled 
him  to  restrain  his  humour.  We  are  free  to 
surmise  that  the  man  who  could  ridicule  so  merci¬ 
lessly  the  Pharisaic  fence-builders  saw  innumer¬ 
able  absurdities  in  the  law  itself — especially  when 
he  read  about  the  religious  importance  of  beard¬ 
trimming  or  about  the  horrid  impiety  of  wearing 
cloth  in  which  wool  mingled  with  linen.  Never¬ 
theless,  he  was  careful  to  avoid  attacking  mere 
absurdities  in  the  law.  When  he  attacked  it,  it 
was  because  he  had  found  something  out  and  out 
vicious — for  example,  a  statute  that  commanded 
men  to  hate  their  enemies. 

He  hated  hate.  He  hated  its  sources.  If  a  man 
had  made  an  enemy,  let  him  go  to  that  enemy  with 
all  speed  and  bring  matters  to  an  agreement  instead 
of  waiting  and  allowing  hate  to  grow.  If  the 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


162 

interview  failed  to  bring  about  an  understanding, 
let  him  invite  mediation;  blessed  are  the  peace¬ 
makers.  If  the  peacemakers  failed,  let  him  sub¬ 
mit  to  wrong.  There  must  be  no  retaliation. 
When  smitten  on  one  cheek,  let  a  man  turn  the 
other.  When  robbed  of  his  coat,  let  him  surrender 
his  cloak  also.  When  forced  to  go  a  mile,  let  him 
go  two  miles.  Instead  of  hating  his  enemy,  let 
him  love  his  enemy  and  recompense  evil  with  good. 
How  else  could  a  man  be  perfect  even  as  his  Father 
in  heaven  was  perfect? 

Everyone  recognizes  the  idealism  in  such  princi¬ 
ples  as  these,  but  their  practicality  is  still  ques¬ 
tioned,  and  there  are  those  who  wonder  if  the  young 
rabbi  of  Nazareth  lived  up  to  them  always, 
himself.  He  had  enemies;  each  new  onslaught  of 
his  upon  Pharisaism  added  to  their  numbers,  and 
the  more  bigoted  among  those  enemies  sought  to 
lynch  him.  Is  it  credible  that  a  young  rabbi  who 
denounced  them  in  such  vitriolic  terms  managed, 
nevertheless,  to  love  them?  It  is  not  only  credible, 
it  is  a  fact. 

They  knew  it.  There  were  Pharisees  who  enter¬ 
tained  him  in  their  homes.  At  least  one  Pharisee 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF  163 

came  to  consult  him.  Many  Pharisees  joined  the 
early  church,  and  its  chief  leader,  propagandist, 
and  theologian  had  been  brought  up  a  Pharisee  of 
the  Pharisees  at  Tarsus.  Men  are  not  given  to 
courting  or  consulting  one  who  hates  them  during 
his  lifetime  or  to  following  him  after  his  death. 

Generally  even  the  extreme  bigots  soon  recov¬ 
ered  from  their  paroxysms  of  rage.  We  never 
read  of  any  organized  opposition  to  the  movement 
the  rabbi  of  Nazareth  led  or  to  any  plot  against 
him  until  the  very  end.  Even  then  the  Pharisees 
played  an  inconspicuous  part — perhaps  none.  Of 
his  four  biographers,  only  one,  the  least  authorita¬ 
tive,  speaks  of  Pharisees  in  the  gang  that  captured 
him.  The  others  describe  it  as  made  up  of  priests, 
pedants,  captains  of  the  temple,  and  Roman 
legionaries;  Pharisees  are  not  mentioned. 

Savage,  undeniably,  are  the  young  rabbi’s  at¬ 
tacks  on  Pharisaism  as  we  read  them  now.  Were 
they  as  savage  at  the  time,  or  offset,  measurably,  by 
the  charm  and  sweetness  of  an  endearing  personali¬ 
ty?  We  know  how  easy  it  is  to  tolerate  reprimand 
that  is  given  with  a  smile,  how  difficult  it  is  to 
cherish  resentment  against  the  rebuking  prophet 


1 64  THE  MAN  HIMSELF 

whose  heart  overflows  with  kindliness  and  whose 
days  are  crowded  with  good  works.  And  there 
is  something  winning  about  fun  when  the  point  is 
legitimately  taken  and  the  fun-maker  not  too  frigid 
or  too  prone  to  denounce  the  sinner  along  with  the 
sin.  It  may  well  be  that  among  the  Pharisees  who 
learned  of  the  Nazarene’s  exploit  in  fence-building 
there  were  many  who  saw  their  own  ridiculous 
fence  for  what  it  was — and  laughed. 

At  any  rate,  he  had  once  more  made  clear  his 
conception  of  righteousness  as  an  affair  of  the 
heart,  once  more  enunciated  the  principle  no  mor¬ 
alist  before  him  had  grasped — From  within,  out. 
The  Pharisees  themselves,  in  their  more  reflective 
moments,  could  appreciate  the  naturalness,  the 
reasonableness,  the  glowing  friendliness  of  that. 
For  the  first  time  in  their  lives  they  listened  to  a 
Jew  who  recognized  their  inherent  goodness,  told 
them  they  were  sons  of  God,  and,  instead  of  mak¬ 
ing  righteousness  deterrent  because  artificial,  made 
it  attractive  because  of  its  complete  normality. 
Moreover,  the  righteousness  he  proclaimed  was 
a  new  righteousness,  at  once  idealistic  and  practi¬ 
cal.  Its  adoption  produced  a  new  kind  of  man. 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF  165 

Many  there  were  who  rejected  it,  but  those  who 
followed  the  Nazarene  and  obeyed  him  came  soon 
to  discover  that  his  doctrine — From  within,  out¬ 
worked  an  astonishing  change  within.  Conscience 
became  clearer.  Motive  grew  stronger.  Char¬ 
acter  broadened  and  deepened  and  ripened.  In 
their  efforts  to  explain  the  change,  some  spoke  of 
a  free  gift — grace;  others  said  it  was  like  the 
supernatural  building  of  a  holy  temple;  still  others 
declared  that  the  very  spirit  of  the  Nazarene  was 
being  shaped  within  them.  Not  one  asserted  or 
so  much  as  imagined  that  it  was  a  change  wrought 
by  the  Christian’s  own  unaided  effort.  In  those 
days  you  never  heard  of  salvation  by  character, 
you  heard  of  character  by  salvation.  Religion  was 
no  longer  a  mere  observance,  morally  or  spiritu¬ 
ally;  it  was  the  life  of  God  in  the  soul  of  man, 
guiding,  impelling,  inspiring,  and  thereby  won- 
drously  transforming. 


XXI 


There  are  honest  men,  not  a  few,  who  think  the 
Nazarene  rabbi  a  dreamer.  The  beauty,  the 
sweetness,  the  unrivalled  idealism  of  his  teachings 
they  admire,  but  in  much  the  same  way  that  they 
admire  a  symphony  or  a  poem.  Both  symphony 
and  poem  are  good  for  the  soul.  Good  for  the  soul, 
likewise,  are  visionary  maxims,  they  assume — 
maxims  which  they  say  we  ought  all  of  us  to  obey, 
yet  which,  as  they  also  tell  us,  no  one  can  obey. 
Thus  it  comes  about  that  moderns  frequently  re¬ 
gard  certain  of  the  young  rabbi’s  teachings,  not  as 
maxims  to  be  applied,  but  as  a  source  of  what  they 
are  pleased  to  call  uplift. 

It  is  difficult  to  see  what  uplift  results  from 
clearly  perceiving  an  ideal  and  then  pronounc¬ 
ing  it  no  more  applicable  in  the  world  of  affairs 
than  a  symphony  would  be,  or  a  lyric.  The  actual 
result  is  not  uplift,  it  is  mental  confusion, 

moral  groping,  and  an  altogether  false  estimate 

1 66 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF  167 

of  the  Nazarene  as  a  well-intentioned  young  phi¬ 
losopher  who  had  got  in  over  his  depth — for 
example,  when  he  said  we  must  love  our  en¬ 
emies. 

But  observe.  We  are  told  to  like  them.  Liking 
and  loving  are  two  different  things.  The  test  of 
liking  is  congeniality.  The  test  of  love  is  service. 
You  can  love  without  liking.  To  make  this  plain 
the  man  of  Nazareth  told  a  story  about  a  Jew  who 
was  held  up  by  bandits.  They  robbed  him  and 
mauled  him  and  left  him  flat  in  the  road  more  dead 
than  alive,  and  there  he  lay  until  a  stranger  hap¬ 
pened  along  on  a  donkey.  The  stranger  had  no 
liking  for  Jews.  His  ancestors,  far  back,  had 
been  converts  to  Judaism  in  the  East  when  the 
Jews  were  captive  there  after  the  great  deporta¬ 
tion,  and  had  followed  the  Jews  to  Palestine  when 
the  period  of  captivity  was  over.  In  Palestine 
the  Jews  had  excommunicated  them.  Consequent¬ 
ly,  they  had  founded  a  temple  of  their  own  on 
Mount  Gerizim,  with  a  priesthood  of  their  own 
and  a  ritual  of  their  own,  thus  adding  to  racial 
and  social  antipathies  a  sect  antipathy.  After  four 
hundred  years,  Jews  had  still  no  dealings  with 


1 68 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


Samaritans,  or  Samaritans  with  Jews.  A  Jew  and 
a  Samaritan  were  enemies  at  sight. 

Nevertheless,  when  the  Samaritan  in  the  story 
saw  the  Jew  the  bandits  had  all  but  killed,  he  took 
him  up,  bandaged  his  wounds,  carried  him  on  his 
donkey  to  the  nearest  tavern,  spent  the  night  there 
nursing  him,  and  in  the  morning  paid  his  bill.  Be¬ 
fore  leaving,  he  instructed  the  innkeeper  to  take 
care  of  him.  It  would  cost  something.  Very  well, 
let  him  charge  it  to  the  Samaritan. 

There  the  story  ends.  We  are  not  told  that 
the  Samaritan  looked  up  the  Jew  later  on  and 
sought  to  make  a  friend  of  him.  We  are  not  told 
that  he  wanted  to.  We  are  left  to  assume  that 
he  disliked  Jews  as  cordially  after  the  episode  as 
before  it,  but,  using  the  word  in  the  sense  in  which 
the  Nazarene  used  it,  how  he  had  loved  his 
enemy! 

But  many  who  think  the  Nazarene  a  dreamer 
dismiss  his  precept  about  loving  one’s  enemies  as 
a  mere  instance  of  oriental  exaggeration,  like  his 
remark  that  faith  could  remove  mountains.  It  was 
no  such  thing,  though,  by  any  interpretation,  it 
would  be  a  genial  precept,  whereas  certain  others, 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF  169 

though  genial  in  motive,  contain  all  the  potenti¬ 
alities  of  mischief. 

He  taught  his  followers  to  make  a  virtue  of  in¬ 
discriminate  giving  and  of  indiscriminate  lending. 
In  practice,  indiscriminate  giving  and  indiscrimi¬ 
nate  lending  are  vices,  not  virtues,  and  they  are  so 
manifestly  vices  that  the  point  is  no  longer  dis¬ 
cussed.  We  have  got  beyond  pauperizing  people. 
We  are  not  going  back  to  it.  And  once,  when  an 
excellent  young  man  came  to  the  Nazarene  and 
asked  how  he  could  attain  salvation,  he  was  bidden 
to  follow  the  Nazarene,  but  first  to  sell  all  he  had 
and  give  to  the  poor.  When  the  young  man  heard 
the  saying,  he  went  away  sorrowful,  for,  as  we 
read,  he  was  one  that  had  great  possessions.  In 
these  days,  young  men  of  his  stamp  receive  better 
advice. 

It  was  a  pupil  of  his,  and  not  the  Nazarene,  who 
denounced  the  love  of  money  as  a  root  of  all  kinds 
of  evil;  yet  it  was  the  Nazarene  himself  who 
warned  his  hearers  against  the  deceitfulness  of 
riches,  and  who  said  that  a  camel  could  go  through 
a  needle’s  eye  more  easily  than  a  rich  man  could 
enter  into  the  Kingdom  of  God,  and  who  even 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


170 

forbade  thrift.  There  was  to  be  no  laying  up  of 
treasure.  There  was  to  be  no  provision  against  the 
morrow.  Food,  wine,  clothing — why  worry  about 
them?  The  birds  were  not  worrying  about  the 
morrow’s  food.  The  lilies,  though  more  gloriously 
arrayed  than  any  monarch,  were  not  worrying 
about  the  morrow’s  clothes,  nor  were  they  working. 
God  fed  the  birds  to-day  and  would  feed  them  to¬ 
morrow.  God  clothed  the  lilies  to-day  and  would 
clothe  them  to-morrow.  The  only  thing  one  ought 
to  worry  about  was  how  to  enter  into  the  Kingdom 
of  God  and  seek  his  righteousness.  Then  food, 
wine  and  clothing  would  all  be  provided.  Let  the 
morrow  worry  about  itself.  Sufficient  unto  the 
day  was  the  evil  thereof. 

What  shall  we  say  of  this?  That  the  young  rab¬ 
bi  was  without  responsibilities,  himself,  and  with¬ 
out  practical  experience,  and  therefore  without 
ordinary  good  sense  in  business  matters?  Thirty 
years  of  his  life  are  virtually  blank.  For  all  we 
know,  his  employment  as  a  carpenter  may  have 
taught  him  much,  and  certainly  he  understood 
banking.  A  fable  he  once  used  by  the  way  of  illus¬ 
tration  tells  how  a  rich  man,  having  left  money  in 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


171 

the  keeping  of  his  subordinates,  was  indignant 
when  he  returned  and  found  that  one  of  them  had 
hoarded  the  money  instead  of  putting  it  out  at  in¬ 
terest. 

Or  are  we  to  assume  that  in  his  praise  of  heedless 
giving,  his  condemnation  of  wealth,  and  his  wor¬ 
ship  of  improvidence,  he  was  thinking  in  italics, 
speaking  in  capitals,  and  saying  vastly  more  than 
he  meant?  That  assumption  is  as  untenable  as  the 
other.  Now  and  then,  to  be  sure,  he  could  over¬ 
state  for  emphasis ;  it  was  a  matter  of  circumstances 
and  the  mood  and  the  kind  of  listeners  he  had. 
But  these  exaltations  of  unscientific  charity  and  of 
complete  indifference  to  money  and  its  entailed 
responsibilities  occur  in  sermons,  in  parables,  and 
in  talks  with  individuals;  a  wide  variety  of  circum¬ 
stance  attends  them,  a  wide  variety  of  mood.  Yet 
they  are  always  the  same.  He  was  in  earnest. 

Modern  readers  feel  that  he  was,  and  this,  chief¬ 
ly,  is  why  they  think  him  a  dreamer.  They  say 
he  preaches  economic  folly — that  to  obey  him 
would  be  to  bring  ruin,  not  only  upon  oneself,  but 
upon  one’s  dependents  as  well,  and  to  force  others 
to  perform  the  obligations  one  has  shirked.  From 


172 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


that  they  go  on  to  say  that  a  preacher  of  economic 
folly  betrays  a  shallowness  that  unfits  him  to  be  an 
authoritative  guide  in  any  realm  of  conduct  what¬ 
soever.  They  will  come  to  him  for  uplift,  so 
called.  They  will  admire  the  beauty,  the  sweet¬ 
ness,  the  unrivalled  idealism  of  his  teachings,  but 
only  as  they  admire  a  symphony  or  a  poem.  They 
will  sentimentalize  over  him.  They  will  perhaps, 
even  believe — or  half  believe — the  innumerable 
strange  theories  metaphysicians  have  excogitated 
regarding  him  ever  since  his  death.  But  obey 
him — no.  He  was  too  visionary,  they  think. 

Well,  what  else  can  we  expect?  Theologians,  in 
their  determination  to  prove  him  a  god,  systemati¬ 
cally  obscure  his  belief  in  his  second  coming, 
though  it  was  his  central  idea.  Not  one  of  those 
maxims  of  his  about  property  need  concern  us  for 
a  moment.  He  was  not  thinking  of  us  when  he 
spoke.  He  intended  those  maxims  about  property 
for  Galilean  yokels  and  villagers  of  the  First  Cen¬ 
tury,  A.D.,  and  for  them  alone.  How  could  they 
apply  to  our  Twentieth-Century  civilization? 
There  was  to  be  no  Twentieth-Century  civiliza¬ 
tion.  There  was  to  be  no  Twentieth  Century. 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


173 


Early  in  the  Second  Century,  A.D.,  at  latest,  the 
world  itself  would  dissolve  and  the  Kingdom  of 
God  be  proclaimed,  with  the  Messiah  as  its  ever- 
living  sovereign.  If  his  maxims  about  property 
were  unpractical,  what  matter?  Nothing  mat¬ 
tered,  with  the  end  of  all  things  so  near — nothing, 
that  is,  except  the  one  tremendous  issue.  Judgment 
was  at  hand.  If  anxieties  over  money  endangered 
men’s  immortal  souls,  then  away  with  anxieties 
about  money.  If  beggars  whined  at  one’s  elbow, 
what  virtue  in  denying  them  alms?  They  might 
be  in  want— decently  so.  But,  even  if  they  were 
frauds,  one  would  not  be  breeding  hordes  of  pau¬ 
perized  and  predatory  humbugs;  the  time  was 
too  short;  and  in  any  case  there  remained  the 
generosity  of  a  good  deed. 

Theology  has  gained  nothing  by  making  the 
young  rabbi  of  Nazareth  a  god.  It  has  lost  much 
by  denying  that  he  expected  soon  to  come  again. 
Falsifying  the  man  has  falsified  his  teachings  also, 
and  provided  an  easy  way  out  for  those  who  would 
escape  the  duties  laid  upon  them  by  the  supreme 
moralist  and  prophet  whom,  of  right,  we  call 
master. 


XXII 


One  essential  of  greatness — its  prime  essential, 
we  might  almost  say — is  littleness.  When  his  pu¬ 
pils  asked  which  of  them  was  to  be  greatest,  the 
Nazarene  took  a  little  boy  and  set  him  by  his  side, 
and  told  them  that  the  pupil  who  would  be  least  of 
all  should  be  greatest. 

It  is  true  that  the  Nazarene  could  speak  of  him¬ 
self  as  greater  than  the  old  Jewish  sages  and  as  the 
Messiah  foretold  in  prophecy.  Yet,  by  compari¬ 
son  with  what  has  come  of  them,  how  little  were  his 
thoughts!  His  world  was  little,  and  destined  soon 
to  perish.  His  mission  was  little,  and  designed  to 
affect  only  the  men  of  his  day  and  of  a  brief  time 
thereafter.  His  church,  as  he  now  and  then  called 
it,  was  a  mere  unorganized  group  within  the  Jew¬ 
ish  church.  Even  his  philosophy  of  morals  was 
limited.  He  was  not  reconstructing  society.  He 
taught  a  personal  religion,  a  personal  morality. 
There  he  stopped. 


174 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


i75 

Those  who  picture  him  as  planning  a  new  social 
order  find  no  warrant  for  that  assumption  in  any 
of  his  recorded  utterances,  loudly  though  the  world 
in  his  day  cried  out  for  a  new  social  order.  He 
saw  slaves  toiling  in  Galilean  vineyards,  but  never 
attacked  slavery.  He  saw  Roman  legionaries 
swaggering  in  Jerusalem,  but  never  sought  to  abol¬ 
ish  militarism.  On  coins  he  saw  the  likeness  of  a 
foreign  despot,  but  he  never  denounced  imperial¬ 
ism.  And  yet,  in  spite  of  his  failure  to  deal  with 
flagrant  national  and  international  abuses,  he  was 
a  world  reformer  such  as  the  world  had  never  be¬ 
held  before  and  such  as  it  has  never  beheld  since. 

For  society  is  an  abstraction.  What  exists  con¬ 
cretely  is  people.  Reconstruct  people,  and  lo,  you 
have  reconstructed  society!  Without  realizing  it, 
the  man  from  Nazareth  was  abolishing  slavery, 
shaming  militarism,  dissolving  empires,  and  creat¬ 
ing  a  new  heaven  and  a  new  earth. 

Centuries  had  to  go  by  before  Christianity  pro¬ 
duced  anywhere  the  type  of  character  that  could 
put  an  end  to  slavery.  No  sooner  had  the  Naza- 
rene  found  martyrdom  than  theology  began  to 
imply  that  the  reconstruction  of  character  was  un- 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


176 

important,  relatively,  and  the  acceptance  of  cor¬ 
rect  metaphysical  theories  about  him  the  supreme 
duty  of  man.  When  at  last  Christianity  did  pro¬ 
duce  here  and  there  the  type  of  character  that  could 
put  an  end  to  slavery,  theologians  had  already 
argued  that,  inasmuch  as  all  scripture  was  miracu¬ 
lously  inspired,  an  unimpeachable  authority  at¬ 
tached  to  the  old  Jewish  classics.  There  slavery 
was  not  only  allowed,  it  was  specifically  command¬ 
ed  by  Jehovah  himself. 

The  old-time  Jewish  saints  had  slaves;  Abraham 
owned  upwards  of  three  hundred.  Priests  bought 
souls  with  money — those  are  the  words.  Cruelty 
to  slaves  was  so  common  as  to  necessitate  a  law 
against  knocking  out  maidservants’  eyes.  Ordi¬ 
narily,  Jews  bought  their  slaves  from  foreigners; 
Solomon’s  slaves — he  had  a  drove  of  them — were 
Hittites,  Amorites,  and  such,  but  frequently  Jews 
owned  Jews. 

Jehovah  was  not  entirely  callous.  This  spec¬ 
tacle  of  Jews  owning  Jews  displeased  him,  and  he 
had  Jeremiah  announce  that  every  man  was  to  let 
his  manservant  and  every  man  his  maidservant, 
being  an  Hebrew  or  an  Hebrewess,  go  free — none 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


177 


was  to  serve  himself  of  them — to  wit,  of  a  Jew  his 
brother.  Once  every  fifty  years,  all  slaves  were 
set  free.  Jehovah  so  decreed.  But  thereupon  the 
enslavement  of  human  beings  began  anew,  and 
slavery  as  an  institution  remained  as  before.  As 
an  institution  it  had  been  divinely  ordained.  To 
question  its  inherent  rightness  would  have  amount¬ 
ed  to  impiety. 

But  it  was  not  for  this  reason  that  the  young 
rabbi  let  the  institution  of  slavery  alone.  He  let 
all  institutions  alone.  All  were  doomed  to  pass 
away  speedily,  along  with  the  earth  itself.  And 
yet  he  taught  that  men  were  sons  of  God.  Sons  of 
God  aware  of  their  sonship,  aware  of  its  implica¬ 
tion,  and  prizing  the  reconstruction  of  character 
above  allegiance  to  dogma,  do  not  keep  other  sons 
of  God  in  slavery  or  permit  them  to  be  kept  in 
slavery.  The  world-wide  liberation  of  slaves  from 
physical  bondage  presupposed  a  liberation  of  man¬ 
kind  from  mental  bondage.  It  has  been  a  poor 
liberation — this  of  the  mind.  It  is  still  in  its  begin¬ 
nings.  But,  nevertheless,  it  was  sufficient  to  crush 
an  evil  as  old,  almost,  as  the  race. 

The  Collectivists  tell  us  that  chattel  slavery  has 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


178 

vanished  only  to  be  replaced  by  wage  slavery — a 
rash  assertion,  but  not  without  effect.  In  virtu¬ 
ally  the  entire  realm  of  industry  there  prevails  an 
atmosphere  surcharged  with  resentment.  Where¬ 
as,  a  single  maxim  of  the  Nazarene’s,  when  taken 
at  face  value  by  employed  and  employer  alike,  will 
end  all  resentment  by  removing  its  cause  on  both 
sides.  He  said,  and  meant  it,  that  whatever  a  man 
would  have  others  do  to  him  the  man  must  do  to 
others.  Every  one  knows  that  the  Nazarene  said 
this.  Every  one  knows  that  he  meant  it.  But, 
before  it  can  find  its  application  in  industry,  a  great 
deal  of  laborious  theological  thinking  will  have 
to  be  laboriously  unthought. 

By  denying  his  belief  in  his  own  second  coming, 
and  then  bidding  us  suppose  that  he  intended  his 
ideas  about  property  to  be  accepted  as  sound  busi¬ 
ness  principles  to-day,  theologians  have  convinced 
employers  that  he  was  a  dreamily  unpractical  en¬ 
thusiast  bereft  of  all  shrewdness.  By  denying  his 
belief  in  his  own  second  coming — -a  speedy  second 
coming,  be  it  remembered — theologians  have  mis¬ 
interpreted  his  emphasis  upon  other-worldliness. 
The  mechanic,  or  labourer,  consequently*  imagines 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


179 


that  to-day  he  would  have  the  poor  and  distressed 
fix  their  thoughts  on  the  bliss  that  awaits  them  in 
the  other  world  and  put  up  with  poverty  and  dis¬ 
tress  meekly  in  this  world.  Here  and  there  an  em¬ 
ployer  imagines  so.  One  such  employer,  when 
asked  for  a  solution  of  the  Labour  problem,  recom¬ 
mended  Bibles  and  beer.  Others  have  prescribed 
revivals.  Labour  is  aware  of  this,  and  the  advent 
of  a  certain  uproariously  popular  evangelist 
arouses  everywhere  the  suspicion  that  he  had  been 
called  in  as  a  preventive  of  strikes. 

The  Nazarene  taught  meekness,  it  is  true,  but 
meekness  for  all.  He  invited  the  weary  and  heavy 
laden  to  come  to  him  and  find  rest,  but  he  invited 
all  the  weary  and  heavy  laden,  not  those  of  the 
labouring  class  alone.  He  had  nothing  whatever 
to  say  about  the  Labour  problem.  He  foresaw 
neither  the  modern  industrial  conflict  nor  the  pos¬ 
sibility  of  the  modern  industrial  conflict.  And  yet, 
he  showed  us  the  way  out.  More  and  more  em¬ 
ployers  and  employed  every  year  are  availing 
themselves  of  it.  There  is  no  other. 

But  conflicts  between  nations — what  of  those? 
Ten  million  boys  perished,  not  long  ago,  in  a  war 


i8o 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


waged  by  nominally  Christian  nations.  Carrying 
Bibles  and  prayerbooks,  they  went  out  to  kill. 
Chaplains  attended  them.  Crosses — mute  symbols 
of  a  very  different  death — now  mark  their  graves. 
All  through  the  mission  fields  the  news  of  it  has 
gone,  and  no  more  Christianity  is  wanted  there. 

Theologians,  in  their  unwillingness  to  admit 
that  the  Nazarene  believed  he  was  coming  again 
and  in  their  insistence  that  he  was  a  god,  imply 
that  he  foresaw  this.  If  so,  why  did  he  never  con¬ 
demn  war,  and  why  did  his  remarks  about  peace 
and  blessedness  of  peacemaking  relate  solely  to 
peace  between  individuals,  and  why,  in  his  only 
mention  of  war — the  bloodshed  that  was  to  occur 
shortly  before  his  second  coming — did  he  never 
hint  that  war  was  needless? 

The  man  himself  has  explained  why.  All  wars 
were  soon  to  stop— the  world  was.  And  yet  he  has 
told  us  how  to  abolish  war.  He  forbade  arrogance. 
He  forbade  covetousness.  He  forbade  malicious 
misrepresentation.  He  forbade  hate.  He  forbade 
violence.  He  forbade  retaliation.  He  command¬ 
ed  men  to  love  their  enemies.  He  was  dealing  only 
with  individuals;  granted;  but  nations  are  com- 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


1 8 1 


posed  of  individuals — and  of  nothing  else.  Re¬ 
construct  individuals  and  you  have  reconstructed 
nations. 

We  are  told  that  it  is  governments,  and  foreign 
offices  more  particularly,  that  make  wars.  It  is. 
But  every  nation  has  the  government  it  deserves. 
It  deserves  that  government  because  its  people 
tolerate  that  government.  Reconstruct  people, 
and  in  the  end  you  reconstruct  governments. 

The  mission  fields  are  altogether  wrong  when 
they  say  that  Christian  nations  allowed  the  catas¬ 
trophe  of  1914.  There  were  no  Christian  nations 
involved.  Instead  there  were  nations  persuaded 
by  theorists  and  metaphysicians  into  imagining 
that  they  could  follow  the  Nazarene  without  obey¬ 
ing  him.  It  is  strange  that  the  mission  fields  ever 
thought  the  so-called  Christian  nations  were  Chris¬ 
tian.  Those  nations  own  the  mission  fields — or  to 
a  vast  extent  they  do.  How  did  they  get  them? 
Thou  shalt  not  steal. 

When  the  Nazarene  saw  Roman  legionaries 
swaggering  in  the  city  of  David  and  a  Roman  vice¬ 
roy  enthroned  there,  imperialism  was  a  crude  sort 
of  thing,  frankly  brutal — easy  to  denounce,  accord- 


182 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


ingly,  as  it  had  as  yet  no  sophistical  defence.  No 
Roman  viceroy  said  he  was  there  for  the  good  of 
the  Jewish  people.  When  Romans  stole  countries 
peopled  with  dark-skinned  natives,  nobody  in 
Rome  called  it  taking  up  the  white  man’s  burden. 
Times  have  changed  since  then.  It  is  no  longer 
easy  to  denounce  imperialism,  though  the  victims 
of  imperialism  are  beginning  to  help  us  a  little. 
Within  a  century  or  two— perhaps  less — they  may 
help  us  by  force,  successfully.  Stranger  things 
have  happened.  Meanwhile  there  emerges  now 
and  then  the  type  of  Christian  who  asks,  gropingly, 
if  there  are  not  more  Christian  ways  of  taking  up 
the  white  man’s  burden  than  by  breaking  a  com¬ 
mandment  the  Nazarene  himself  indorsed  and  pro¬ 
claimed  and  told  his  followers  to  obey. 

Such  gropings  are  dangerous.  They  are  un¬ 
popular.  They  are  revolutionary.  But  so  are  all 
gropings  toward  the  man  of  Nazareth  and  his 
truth.  His  truth  leads  to  the  reconstruction  of 
character,  and  the  reconstruction  of  character  in 
the  individual  leads  to  a  reconstruction  of  char¬ 
acter  in  the  nation.  No  nation,  once  consenting  to 
obey  the  Nazarene,  instead  of  trusting  to  the 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF  183 

magical  efficacy  of  accepting  sham  theories  about 
him,  will  rob  other  nations  of  their  birthright. 

Neither  will  any  nation  then  oppress  any  class 
of  its  own  people.  The  change  may  come  about 
through  the  Christianization  of  existing  systems.  It 
may  require  the  destruction  of  all  existing  systems. 
But  come  it  will.  And  to  say  confidently  that  it  will 
come  is  a  different  thing,  quite,  from  predicting  a 
Utopia.  The  Utopias  have  invariablybeenschemes 
for  reconstructing  society  without  first  reconstruct¬ 
ing  individuals.  The  Nazarene  went  at  it  the 
other  way  about.  He  was  unaware  that  he  had 
gone  at  it  at  all.  But  then,  the  measure  of  greatness 
lies,  not  in  what  it  is  consciously,  the  measure  of 
greatness  lies  in  what  it  is  unconsciously.  If  his 
thoughts  were  little,  they  were  germinal.  One 
word  gives  the  secret  of  humanity’s  complete  re¬ 
habilitation.  It  is  a  word  of  two  syllables — obey. 

And  so  we  are  able  to  name  very  clearly,  though 
without  theological  prepossession  and  without  de¬ 
nying  that  many  hundreds  of  years  may  have  to  go 
by  before  our  assertion  is  justified,  the  relation  be¬ 
tween  the  young  rabbi  of  Nazareth  and  the  world. 
He  was  its  saviour. 


XXIII 


Never  having  heard  that  all  Scripture  was  given 
by  inspiration  of  God,  the  Nazarene  believed  in 
conscious  immortality.  Except  for  a  single 
wealthy  denomination  among  them,  all  the  Jews 
of  his  time  did.  No  more  than  the  man  himself 
had  they  heard  that  all  Scripture  was  given  by  in¬ 
spiration  of  God. 

According  to  a  majority  of  their  ancient  sages, 
death  was  an  eternal  sleep,  if  not  exactly  extinction. 
A  man  was  like  the  beasts  that  perish.  He  went 
down  to  his  fathers,  who  would  never  again  see  the 
light.  The  living  knew  that  they  must  die;  the 
dead  knew  nothing;  as  well  their  love  as  their 
hatred  and  their  envy  was  at  an  end.  As  a  cloud 
vanished,  so  vanished  the  dead. 

You  can  read  the  collection  of  old  Jewish  clas¬ 
sics  seven  eighths  of  the  way  through  before 
coming  to  any  definite  intimation  that  conscious¬ 
ness  survives  death.  Even  then,  immortality  is 

184 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


185 

seldom  mentioned,  perhaps  because  the  writers 
recalled  that  Jehovah  abhorred  it.  In  a  famous 
story — the  one  about  the  first  people  and  the  crime 
they  committed  when,  by  eating  forbidden  fruit, 
they  acquired  conscience — we  are  told  that  Je¬ 
hovah  expelled  them  from  the  garden  lest  they 
might  eat  the  fruit  of  the  tree  of  life  and  live  for 
ever. 

This  story  made  a  deep  and  lasting  impression. 
Until  the  great  deportation,  which  brought  Jews 
into  contact  with  Babylonians  and  with  the  Baby¬ 
lonian  faith  in  immortality,  no  Jew  dared  to  think 
that  Jehovah  would  permit  consciousness  to  sur¬ 
vive  death.  Salvation  was  salvation  in  this  world 
only — salvation  from  enemies,  from  poverty,  from 
disease.  The  other  world  held  neither  reward  nor 
retribution.  Heaven — the  solid  sky  called  a  firma¬ 
ment — was  the  abode  of  Jehovah,  the  angels,  and 
Satan.  No  human  soul  had  ever  reached  it  except 
Elijah’s  and  perhaps  Enoch’s.  But  Enoch  had 
not  died,  and  Elijah  had  ascended  into  heaven, 
alive.  And,  in  the  theological  sense  of  the  word, 
there  was  no  hell.  The  orthodox  Jewish  hell  was 
a  place  under  the  ground  where  the  dead  slept  in 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


1 86 

comfort  with  their  fathers,  and  were  much  an¬ 
noyed  when  a  spiritualist  woke  them  up. 

From  the  orthodox  Jewish  tirades  against  spirit¬ 
ualism,  we  learn  that  the  occult  fascinated  the 
Jewish  popular  mind.  Jews  loved  mediums — 
witches,  wizards,  sorcerers,  and  adepts  controlled 
by  familiar  spirits  abound  in  the  chronicles.  We 
learn  of  occultists  who  could  read  minds  at  a  dis¬ 
tance  and  of  occultists  who  could  project  their 
spirits  out  of  their  bodies.  Even  prophets  dabbled 
in  these  arts.  Elisha,  in  Palestine,  knew  what  the 
king  of  Samaria  was  saying  in  his  bedroom.  Eze¬ 
kiel,  leaving  his  body  in  Babylon,  revisited  Pales¬ 
tine.  But  of  all  the  occultists,  those  most  valued 
were  the  materializing  mediums.  There  was  one 
at  Endor,  and  the  first  of  the  Jewish  kings  went 

to  see  her.  By  way  of  testing  her  powers,  he  asked 

• 

her  to  bring  him  up  Samuel.  Out  of  the  earth 
came  an  old  man  covered  with  a  robe,  and  the  king 
knew  that  it  was  Samuel,  and  bowed  low.  Samuel, 
however,  showed  irritation.  Why,  he  demanded, 
had  the  medium  disquieted  him? 

Along  with  spiritualism  went  another  belief; 
souls  that  had  just  left  the  body  could  be  summoned 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


187 

back  into  it.  We  read  that  Elijah  stretched  him¬ 
self  upon  the  body  of  a  dead  child,  and  the  child 
lived  again;  also  that  when  a  corpse  was  thrown 
into  Elisha’s  tomb  and  touched  his  bones,  it  stood 
up  alive. 

But  while  the  ancient  Jews  believed  that  medi¬ 
ums  could  awaken  the  dead  and  that  a  prophet 
could  recall  to  life  those  who  had  just  died,  there 
was  no  belief  in  a  general  resurrection  or  in  con¬ 
scious  immortality  until  alien  influence  introduced 
it.  Then,  though  slowly  at  first,  it  spread.  During 
the  long  period  between  the  close  of  the  Old  Testa¬ 
ment  and  the  opening  of  the  New,  belief  in  a 
general  resurrection  and  in  conscious  immortality 
became  orthodox.  Only  the  Sadducees  rejected  it. 
Talking  with  orthodox  Jews,  the  young  rabbi  of 
Nazareth  took  their  belief  for  granted,  and  on  the 
one  occasion  when  he  advanced  an  argument  for 
immortality  he  was  talking  with  Sadducees.  It 
was  hardly  an  argument,  then;  rather  it  was  an 
assertion. 

A  biographer  of  his — the  pupil  whose  narrative 
comes  last  in  the  series  preserved  for  us — gives  the 
impression  that  he  spoke  of  eternal  life  constantly. 


1 88 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


The  others  give  the  impression  that  he  spoke  of  it 
only  rarely.  A  follower  of  his  in  a  letter  to  con¬ 
verts  at  Rome,  glories  in  the  faith  that  robs  death 
of  its  sting  and  the  grave  of  its  victory.  The  man 
himself  never  so  described  it.  Though  he  walked 
steadily  toward  martyrdom,  determined  to  seek  it, 
determined  to  find  it,  and  though  he  dreaded  the 
pain,  he  never  feared  death. 

To  him,  faith  in  the  indestructibility  of  spirit 
was  important,  not  because  it  enabled  a  man  to 
face  with  fortitude  the  momentary — and  in  most 
cases  the  unconscious — plunge  into  a  new  existence, 
but  because  faith  in  the  indestructibility  of  spirit 
enabled  a  man  to  comprehend  in  some  measure  the 
incalculable  importance  of  righteousness.  Upon 
righteousness  depended  eternal  life.  Righteousness 
was  the  condition,  eternal  life  the  reward.  Right¬ 
eousness  was  the  only  condition.  There  could  be 
no  substitute.  Worship  would  not  serve,  correct 
metaphysical  theories  would  not.  In  the  Last 
Judgment  the  angels  were  to  bring  all  nations  be¬ 
fore  him.  Millions  would  come  who,  because 
they  never  heard  of  him,  had  neither  worshipped 
him  nor  held  correct  metaphysical  theories  about 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF  189 

Jt*- 

him.  For  them,  as  for  others,  the  test  was  right¬ 
eousness.  If  they  had  obeyed  the  principle  set 
forth  in  his  teachings,  then  they,  too,  were  to  in¬ 
herit  eternal  life. 

Considering  the  definiteness  with  which  the  man 
of  Nazareth  made  immortality  the  incentive  to 
obedience,  it  still  seems  to  certain  minds  very 
strange  that  he  should  have  left  us  no  argument  to 
strengthen  our  faith  in  immortality.  Such  minds 
want  immortality  proved.  Whereas  only  things 
present  and  things  past  can  be  proved,  and  whereas 
the  Nazarene  never  once  sought  to  prove  things. 
It  was  not  his  way.  When  he  answered  the  Sad- 
ducees  by  quoting  the  Scriptures,  he  knew  that  in 
the  same  Scriptures  conscious  immortality  was  de¬ 
nied  over  and  over  again  and  that  there  were 
sentences  denying  all  immortality.  But  if  the 
quotation  proved  nothing,  it  suggested  much.  And 
his  doctrine  of  the  divine  fatherhood  suggests 
more.  Whoever  will  believe  in  the  divine  father¬ 
hood  must  of  necessity  come  to  disbelieve  in  death. 

Does  a  father  develop  in  his  children  the  at¬ 
tachments  he  himself  intends  to  shatter?  The 
greatest  thing  in  the  world  is  love.  The  thing 


190 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


most  divine  in  man  is  love,  for  God  is  love.  Is 
it  conceivable  that  the  God  who  is  our  father  binds 
us  to  friends  and  kindred  with  ties  of  affection  he 
means  to  break,  as  if  with  his  own  hand,  so  that 
all  that  we  know  to  be  finest  and  tenderest  and 
noblest  in  us  he  rewards  with  irretrievable  disap¬ 
pointment  and  defeat?  No  man,  once  he  has 
thought  of  God  as  his  father,  can  believe  that  such 
is  God’s  plan. 

Then,  too,  the  Nazarene  taught  that  religion 
was  nothing  less  than  the  life  of  God  in  the  soul 
of  man;  he  taught  that  God  was  a  power  making 
for  righteousness;  he  taught  that  therefore  men 
could  be  perfect,  even  as  God  was  perfect.  He 
commanded  them  to  be  perfect,  and  no  serious 
student  of  his  philosophy  will  attempt  to  explain 
away  the  command.  But  given  the  command  and 
given  a  devout  eagerness  to  obey  it,  what  do  fol¬ 
lowers  of  the  Nazarene  discover?  Invariably 
they  perceive  that  no  lifetime,  even  of  fourscore 
years  and  ten,  was  ever  long  enough  for  the  realiza¬ 
tion  of  so  lofty  an  ideal. 

Shall  we  conclude,  then,  that  the  life  of  God  in 
the  soul  of  man  consents  at  last  to  achieve  only  a 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


l9l 

partial  triumph?  Must  we  tell  ourselves  that  the 
power  making  for  righteousness  cannot  wholly 
succeed?  He  who  denies  the  life  beyond  death, 
with  opportunity  beyond  death,  and  moral  effort 
beyond  death,  and  moral  victory  beyond  death, 
must  believe  that  God’s  own  ambition  for  his 
children  ends  in  failure. 

Quite  without  suspecting  that  we  moderns  were 
ever  to  exist,  the  Nazarene  bequeathed  to  us  a 
faith  in  the  divine  fatherhood  that  necessitates  a 
faith  in  the  life  beyond  death — a  conscious  life,  a 
life  eternal,  a  life  triumphant,  a  life  in  which  the 
Nazarene’s  obedient  followers  enter  into  the  joy  of 
their  Lord. 


XXIV 


Pearly  gates,  golden  streets,  with  angels  and 
harps  and  never-ending  canticles — such  is  the  idea 
of  heaven  we  moderns  say  we  have  swept  from  our 
minds.  Yet  the  impression  it  made  remains,  and 
now  and  then  the  idea  itself  recurs.  Christian  art 
brings  it  vividly  before  the  imagination.  So  do 
hymns  circumstantially  describing  heaven  and  set 
to  beautiful  music.  Even  common  talk  calls  it 
back — we  speak  of  another  world,  a  better  land. 
From  time  to  time  we  reopen  the  strangest  of 
early  Christian  books,  and  lo!  there  are  the  pearly 
gates,  the  streets  of  pure  gold ;  there  are  the  founda¬ 
tions  of  jasper,  sapphire,  emerald,  topaz,  and 
amethyst,  just  as  theologians  have  said.  A  single 
passage  reveals  them  all. 

Other  passages  tell  us  that  the  saints  wear  white 
robes  and  play  upon  harps  and  sing  among  angels. 
The  heaven  of  the  strange  book  was  a  Fra  Angelico 
heaven.  It  became  the  orthodox  heaven.  It  is 


192 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


i93 


still  the  heaven  of  little  children,  many  of  whom 
never  outgrow  it.  Supposing  it  to  be  the  heaven 
of  the  Nazarene — for  centuries  theologians  as¬ 
sumed  that  it  was — multitudes  have  seen  in  it  an 
important,  if  not  an  all-sufficing,  reason  for  scorn¬ 
ing  the  Nazarene. 

But  this  strange  little  book  that  tells  so  much 
about  heaven — what  is  it?  It  purports  to  be  a 
prophecy.  In  reality  it  is  an  imitation  prophecy 
— Ezekiel  re-written  by  an  early  Christian  mystic. 

r-  — 

Like  its  model,  it  recounts  visions,  curses  Babylon, 
denounces  a  great  harlot,  pictures  extraordinary 
animals,  and  speaks  of  the  writer’s  measuring  the 
temple  with  a  rod.  Like  its  model,  it  is  a  work  of 
creative  fancy. 

There  the  resemblance  ends.  The  imitation 
prophecy  far  excels  its  model  in  literary  beauty, 
and  now  and  then  attains  a  splendour  unsurpassed 
elsewhere,  while  some  of  its  nobler  sentences  reach 
the  very  summit  of  spirituality.  There  is  an  irre¬ 
sistible  appeal  in  it,  moreover — a  sweetness  and  a 
tenderness  that  win  the  heart.  So  it  is  with  re¬ 
luctance  that  the  reader  cross-questions  its  asser¬ 
tion,  though  one  cross-questions  readily  enough  the 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


]94 

theologians’  many  astonishing  guesses  as  to  their 
meaning. 

Why,  for  example,  did  they  tell  us  that  the  ab¬ 
horred  scarlet  woman  symbolized  clearly  and 
definitely  the  Roman  Catholic  Church?  The 
writer  had  never  heard  of  such  a  thing  as  the 
Roman  Catholic  Church.  And  why  did  they  as¬ 
sure  us  that,  when  he  wrote  of  pearly  gates,  golden 
streets,  and  foundations  of  jasper,  sapphire,  emer¬ 
ald,  topaz,  and  amethyst, he  was  describing  heaven? 
He  himself  thought  not.  In  that  very  passage  he 
said  plainly  that  he  was  describing  a  new  Je¬ 
rusalem  and  that  he  saw  it  descend  out  of  heaven. 
The  new  Jerusalem,  not  heaven,  had  pearly  gates. 
The  new  Jerusalem,  not  heaven,  had  golden  streets. 
The  new  Jerusalem,  not  heaven,  had  foundations 
of  jasper,  sapphire,  emerald,  topaz,  and  amethyst. 

The  writer,  so  his  book  declares,  was  the  Naz- 
arene’s  favourite  pupil.  Many  doubt  that  he  wrote 
a  biography  of  the  Nazarene,  but,  granting  that 
he  did,  it  is  interesting  to  note  that,  although  he 
puts  ideas  of  his  own  into  his  master’s  mouth,  mak¬ 
ing  him  imply  that  he  lived  in  heaven  before  he 
came  to  the  earth,  and  reporting  a  long  and  very 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF  195 

intimate  talk  in  which  the  master  is  said  to  have 
nentioned  heaven,  hardly  anything  about  heaven 
is  disclosed.  There  are  many  mansions  in  his 
father’s  house.  He  is  going  there.  While  there 
he  will  make  ready  a  place  for  his  followers.  Be¬ 
yond  these  vague  intimations,  he  tells  nothing. 
There  is  not  a  word  about  pearly  gates,  or  about 
golden  streets,  or  about  foundations  of  jasper,  sap¬ 
phire,  emerald,  topaz,  and  amethyst. 

Theologians  much  less  bound  over  by  conscience 
to  the  Nazarene’s  own  views  than  was  the  biog¬ 
rapher  have  left  us  a  considerable  mass  of  docu¬ 
ments.  Some  of  these  theologians  had  been  pupils 
of  the  Nazarene.  The  others  had  studied  under 
his  pupils.  All  were  at  liberty  to  report  whatever 
he  had  said  about  heaven  and  at  liberty,  in  a  de¬ 
gree,  to  add  inferential  elaborations  of  their  own. 
Not  one  of  them  describes  pearly  gates.  Not  one 
of  them  mentions  golden  streets.  Not  one  of  them 
speaks  of  jasper,  sapphire,  emerald,  topaz,  and 
amethyst  foundations.  Only  the  mystic  who  re¬ 
wrote  Ezekiel,  thus  giving  us  the  book  we  call  the 
Apocalypse,  or  Revelation,  assumed  to  know  about 
those. 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


196 

It  is  clear,  however,  that  the  Nazarene  thought 
of  heaven  as  a  place,  and  that  the  place  was  some¬ 
where  in  the  general  direction  we  call  up.  He 
was  a  Jew.  He  inherited  Jewish  ideas.  To  him, 
the  earth  was  little,  and  flat,  and  square,  and  not 
very  thick.  Beneath  it  was  water.  Above  it 
arched  a  great  dome.  If  heaven  was  a  place,  then 
heaven  was  somewhere  above  the  dome.  Yet  he 
showed  a  remarkable  vagueness  in  this  as  in  other 
matters  related  to  the  physical  realization  of  his 
philosophy.  That  Messianic  Kingdom — where, 
precisely,  was  it  to  be?  He  never  said.  His  ad¬ 
vent  in  the  sky — how  were  all  nations  to  behold 
him  at  once?  The  physical  impossibility  of  it  dis¬ 
turbed  him  not  in  the  least.  He  never  troubled 
himself  to  think  the  thing  out,  nor  did  his  followers 
attempt  to,  nor  would  any  Jew  of  the  First  Cen¬ 
tury,  A.  D.,  have  attempted  to. 

For  hundreds  of  years  the  Jews  had  believed  that 
up  above  the  solid  sky  dwelt  Jehovah  and  his 
angels.  Old  legends  said  Jehovah  had  frequently 
descended  thence,  and  even  in  the  First  Century, 
A.  D.,  angels  were  supposed  to  be  going  back  and 
forth  between  heaven  and  earth.  According  to 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


197 


one  legend  a  mortal  had  entered  heaven  in  a  char¬ 
iot  of  fire  drawn  by  flaming  steeds.  But  where 
was  the  door  through  which  Jehovah  and  the 
angels  and  the  man  with  his  fiery  chariot  had  all 
passed?  No  one  knew.  No  one  sought  to  find 
out. 

Blandly  indulgent  was  the  Jewish  imagination 
in  its  treatment  of  half-finished  descriptions  and 
half-told  tales.  Legend  would  say  dead  men  came 
to  life  and  failed  to  mention  their  revealing  any¬ 
thing  about  the  heaven  they  had  visited.  The 
failure  made  no  impression.  But  the  Jewish  im¬ 
agination  was  not  alone  in  its  unwillingness  to 
rationalize  its  idea  of  heaven  and  bring  it  to  com¬ 
pletion.  There  was  a  Greek  heaven.  There  was 
a  Norse  heaven.  There  were  Celtic  heavens. 
Olympus,  Asgard,  Hy  Brasil,  and  Avilon  lent 
themselves  no  more  satisfactorily  to  rationalization 
than  did  the  Jewish  heaven,  but  the  kind  of  man 
who  could  object  to  illogical  heavens  had  not  yet 
made  his  appearance  anywhere. 

We  have  outgrown  the  Nazarene’s  idea  of 
heaven — or  assert  that  we  have.  In  our  thinking, 
if  not  in  our  fancying,  we  no  longer  regard  heaven 


198  THE  MAN  HIMSELF 

as  a  place.  It  might  almost  be  said  that  we  for¬ 
get  heaven.  Few  moderns  are  conscious  of  doing 
right  in  order  to  reach  heaven,  though  an  eternity 
in  heaven  was  the  reward  the  young  rabbi  of  Naz¬ 
areth  offered,  and  the  sayings  in  which  he  offered 
it  are  quoted  so  constantly  that,  in  the  popular 
mind,  he  is  a  Nazarene  winning  converts  by  brib¬ 
ery.  Whereas  the  motive  he  addressed  most  com¬ 
monly  and  most  effectively  was  not  self-interest,  it 
was  the  desire  in  men  to  rise  above  self-interest. 
He  would  tell  a  fisherman  to  drop  his  trade  and 
follow  him,  and,  even  in  making  the  demand,  say 
nothing  about  eternal  life.  The  reward  he  offered 
the  fisherman  was  an  opportunity  to  become  a 
fisher  of  men.  He  could  tell  a  young  plutocrat  to 
give  away  all  his  money,  and,  in  making  even  that 
demand,  say  nothing  about  eternal  life.  The  re¬ 
ward  he  offered  the  young  plutocrat  was  an  oppor¬ 
tunity  to  become  perfect.  And  in  the  numberless 
confessions  handed  down  to  us  by  his  converts  the 
whole  preponderance  of  testimony  goes  to  show 
that  the  reward  they  valued  supremely  was  not 
the  reward  they  were  to  receive  in  heaven  but  the 
reward  which  they  had  already  received  and  which 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


199 


made  them  worthy  of  heaven.  The  majority  sel¬ 
dom  speak  of  heaven.  About  worthiness  they 
speak  constantly. 

This,  perhaps,  is  why  their  minds  remained 
so  incurious  regarding  heaven.  Concerning  the 
place  to  which  they  were  going  and  to  which  their 
master  had  long  since  gone  they  asked  no  questions. 
Why  be  inquisitive  about  the  place?  Why  seek 
details?  Here,  in  this  present  world,  a  phenome¬ 
non  of  astounding  novelty  and  importance  dazzled 
them  by  its  increasing  frequency — men  were  be¬ 
coming  worthy.  About  that,  they  talked  and  wrote 
perpetually.  About  that  they  were  curious — over- 
curious,  even.  About  that  they  philosophized  and 
theologized  until  they  lost  their  way  in  the  maze 
of  speculation  which  was  to  serve  as  a  pleasure- 
resort  for  religiously  inclined  metaphysicians  ever 
after. 

It  is  significant  that,  in  all  their  endlessly  elab¬ 
orate  theorizings,  the  Nazarene’s  immediate  fol¬ 
lowers  were  never  tempted  to  theorize  concerning 
heaven.  Like  their  master,  and  like  those  who 
obediently  follow  him  to-day,  they  were  interested 
primarily  in  the  reconstruction  of  character.  Far 


200 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


more  wonderful  than  pearly  gates,  golden  streets, 
and  foundations  of  jasper,  sapphire,  emerald, 
topaz,  and  amethyst  was  the  heaven  within  their 
own  souls*  It  was  a  new  heaven.  It  was  a  heaven 
no  one  had  ever  dreamed  of  before  the  Nazarene 
made  it  real.  And  it  was  a  heaven  without  end. 


XXV 


ETERNAL  damnation,  so  the  rabbi  of  Nazareth 
declared,  awaited  all  who  disobeyed  him.  He 
said  that  when  he  returned  in  glory  to  judge  the 
world,  he  would  send  them  away  into  outer  dark¬ 
ness.  There  was  to  be  weeping,  wailing,  and 
gnashing  of  teeth.  Hell,  he  taught,  was  a  furnace 
of  fire.  The  fire  was  unquenchable,  escape  from 
it  impossible. 

He  told  a  story  about  a  rich  man  and  a  beggar. 
Both  died.  The  rich  man  went  to  hell,  the  beggar 
to  heaven.  From  the  place  of  torment  the  rich 
man  could  see  heaven,  where  the  beggar  lay  in 
Abraham’s  bosom.  The  rich  man  cried  out  to 
him  for  water,  saying  he  was  in  anguish  among  the 
flames.  The  beggar  replied  that  no  water  could 
be  sent.  Between  heaven  and  hell  there  was  a 
great  gulf  fixed;  none  might  cross  over. 

Repeatedly  the  Nazarene  spoke  of  hell.  His 
recorded  descriptions  agree;  the  wicked  passed 


201 


202 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


through  outer  darkness  to  suffer  eternally  in  a  hell 
of  fire;  their  torments  were  physical  torments  plus 
mental  torments. 

For  a  long  time  theologians  in  general  believed 
that  the  young  rabbi  meant  what  he  said,  and 
quite  obviously  he  did.  There  is  nowhere  the 
slightest  evidence  that  he  intended  his  descriptions 
to  be  taken  figuratively.  Nowhere  is  there  evi¬ 
dence  that  his  hearers  took  them  figuratively.  A 
follower  of  his  mentions  punishment  and  eternal 
fire.  Another  mentions  a  lake  burning  with  fire 
and  brimstone.  Not  one  of  the  writers  who  reflect 
early  Christian  thought  ever  attempted  to  show 
that  eternal  damnation  in  a  hell  of  fire  meant  any¬ 
thing  but  eternal  damnation  in  a  hell  of  fire. 

Spiritual  terrorists  still  preach  hell,  a  hell  of 
fire,  an  eternal  hell.  Millions  of  believers,  the 
world  over,  still  quake  at  the  thought  of  it,  and 
permit  the  thought  of  it  to  darken  their  lives  and 
give  them  a  hideous  idea  of  God,  Their  God  is 
our  devil,  with  this  difference:  they  take  their 
hideous  God  seriously,  while  none  of  us  any  longer 
takes  the  devil  seriously. 

Other  millions,  when  told  of  a  God  who  roasted 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


203 


sinners  eternally  in  a  blazing  furnace,  have 
spurned  God.  No  single  dogma  has  bred  vaster 
multitudes  of  unbelievers.  Whereas,  the  Naza- 
rene  never  said  that  God  would  send  the  wicked  to 
hell.  He  said  that  he  himself  would.  Just  this 
distinction,  had  it  been  observed,  would  have  al¬ 
tered  the  whole  trend  of  theology,  spared  the  vic¬ 
tims  of  spiritual  terrorists  incalculable  misery,  and 
prevented  many  an  honest  man  from  repudiating 
all  faith.  But  theology  has  cared  little  for  what 
the  Nazarene  said  about  himself;  it  has  assumed 
that  it  knew  better. 

Nevertheless,  even  theologians  here  and  there 
soon  began  to  wonder  if  perhaps  the  dogma  was 
not  somehow  a  mistake.  Less  than  two  centuries 
after  the  young  rabbi’s  martyrdom,  there  were 
full-fledged  Universalists.  But  Saint  Augustine 
hastened  to  the  defense  of  eternal  damnation,  and 
hundreds  of  years  went  by  before  it  was  again  as¬ 
sailed  from  within  the  church. 

The  churchmen  who  attacked  it  have  all  be¬ 
lieved  in  the  reality  of  future  punishment  but 
sought  to  prove  that  the  Nazarene  meant  some¬ 
thing  very  different  from  what  he  said.  One  type 


204 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


of  remonstrant  has  contended  that,  while  a  hell  of 
fire  might  exist,  it  would  in  course  of  time  consume 
the  wicked  altogether.  Another  type  of  remon¬ 
strant  has  contended  that  a  hell  of  fire  would  in 
course  of  time  reform  them;  Elhaman  Winchester, 
of  Philadelphia,  calculated  that  it  would  take 
about  forty-four  thousand  years.  A  third  type  of 
remonstrant  has  contended  that  the  hell  of  fire 
meant  only  a  hell  of  remorse,  which  might  last 
for  ever  and  might  not.  Restorationists — our 
modern  Universalists  and  those  who  agree  with 
them — think  of  hell  as  a  state  of  mental  torment 
from  which  all  will  eventually  be  saved.  Every 
one  of  these  types  daringly  disregards  the  Naza- 
rene’s  own  teachings.  In  unmistakable  straight 
terms  he  described  a  physical  and  an  eternal  hell 
from  which  there  was  no  escape. 

However,  it  was  a  hell  for  the  wicked  only. 
Mere  theological  offenders  were  in  no  danger  of 
hell-fire.  No  one  was  to  be  sent  there  for  not  be¬ 
lieving  that  the  young  rabbi  was  a  god;  he  himself 
never  believed  that  he  was  a  god.  No  one  was  to 
be  sent  there  for  not  believing  in  the  Trinity;  he 
himself  had  never  heard  of  the  Trinity.  No  one 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


205 


was  to  be  sent  there  for  not  believing  in  the  Atone¬ 
ment;  Abraham,  who  had  died  centuries  before 
anybody  on  earth  believed  in  the  Atonement,  was 
in  heaven. 

Time  out  of  mind  spiritual  terrorists  have  used 
hell  as  a  device  for  scaring  people  into  orthodoxy. 
The  Nazarene  used  it  as  a  device  for  scaring  them 
into  righteousness.  They  were  not  to  obey  him 
from  fear  alone.  They  were  to  obey  him  from  the 
highest  motives  as  well.  But,  believing  that  an 
eternal  hell  of  fire  was  a  reality,  and  that  into  that 
eternal  hell  of  fire  the  wicked  would  be  cast,  he 
could  make  no  secret  of  it,  for  he  himself  was  to  be 
the  judge. 

Nothing  in  the  whole  account  of  the  Nazarene 
rabbi  is  so  astounding  as  his  calm,  unwavering, 
unquestioning  conviction  that  soon  he  would  have 
to  send  people  to  hell.  Such  a  role  was  monstrous, 
inherently,  and  at  all  points  out  of  keeping  with 
his  character.  He  loved  to  go  about  healing  the 
sick.  He  forgave  men  their  sins.  He  was  com¬ 
passionate.  Even  while  being  executed,  he  beg¬ 
ged  his  father  in  heaven  to  forgive  his  executioners. 
Why,  then,  did  he  permit  himself  to  fancy  that  he 


206 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


must  become  the  terrible  judge  who  would 
institute  eternal  damnation? 

No  such  inhumanity  was  implied  by  the  pro¬ 
phetic  writings  about  the  Messiah.  They  de¬ 
scribed  the  Messiah  as  a  judge,  but  not  as  a  brutal 
judge  imposing  penalties  far  exceeding  the  cruel- 
est  even  Jehovah  had  imposed.  On  the  smallest 
provocation,  Jehovah  would  slay  you;  but  there 
the  thing  ended;  you  were  not  punished  eternally 
in  a  furnace  of  fire.  Whence  came  the  gentle 
Nazarene’s  idea  that  this  role  was  assigned  to  him? 

The  answer  brings  us  very  close  to  the  real  man. 
He  had  a  cousin,  a  Jew  of  about  his  own  age,  and 
this  cousin  turned  prophet,  reviving  the  spectac¬ 
ular  uncouthness  of  the  old  Hebrew  dervishes. 
Huge  was  the  impression  he  made.  Crowds 
swarmed  out  to  the  river  bank  where  he  preached. 
Converts  let  him  dip  them  in  the  river.  It  was  a 
new  rite,  symbolizing  moral  purification,  and  one 
day  the  Nazarene,  then  only  a  private  scholar 
supporting  himself  by  working  at  the  carpenter’s 
bench,  went  to  his  cousin  to  receive  baptism.  The 
Baptist  at  first  protested,  saying  that  the  Naza¬ 
rene  ought  instead  to  baptize  him,  for  in  all  his 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


207 


speeches  the  Baptist  had  predicted  that  a  man  far 
greater  than  himself  would  come;  behold,  here 
was  the  man!  Nevertheless,  the  ceremony  pro¬ 
ceeded. 

There  were  reasons  why  it  should.  The  Naza- 
rene  believed  implicitly  in  his  cousin’s  greatness. 
No  greater  man  had  ever  lived,  he  said.  Also,  he 
believed  in  Elijah,  that  prince  of  wonder-workers, 
who  had  ended  his  career  by  riding  to  heaven  in 
a  chariot  of  fire.  The  Nazarene  believed  that  his 
cousin  was  Elijah  reincarnated.  Still  again,  he 
believed  that  a  phrase  written  by  one  of  the 
prophets  centuries  before  described  his  cousin. 
For  these  reasons  he  felt  sure  that  his  cousin  had 
a  right  to  baptize  him. 

But  that  was  not  all.  The  same  reasons  con¬ 
vinced  the  Nazarene  that  whatever  his  cousin 
said  must  be  true,  and  his  cousin  said  that  the 
greater  man  who  should  come  after  him  and  with 
whom  he  identified  the  young  scholar  and  car¬ 
penter,  would  cast  the  wicked  into  unquenchable 
fire. 

However,  there  are  degrees  of  conviction.  A 
belief  alien  to  a  man’s  nature  and  imposed  from 


208 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


without  is  rarely  assimilated.  The  young  rabbi 
could  abide  the  thought  of  having  at  some  future 
day  to  cast  the  wicked  into  unquenchable  fire.  He 
could  use  the  idea  for  alarmist  purposes  and  terror¬ 
ize  into  obedience  those  who  resisted  all  other 
appeals.  He  could  even  declare  that  certain  stub¬ 
bornly  unrepentant  cities — Chorazin  and  Beth- 
saida — would  suffer  a  punishment  worse  than 
Tyre’s  or  Sodom’s.  But  it  was  easy  to  say  he 
would  bring  doom  upon  cities — cities  are  vague. 
It  was  easy  to  say  he  would  deal  harshly  with  the 
wicked  in  general  at  some  future  day — the  wicked 
in  general  are  vague  and  the  future  is  vague.  Con¬ 
fronted  with  individuals  face  to  face,  the  Naza- 
rene  wavered.  Even  when  dealing  with  a  scoffer 
face  to  face  he  never  told  the  scoffer  that  an  eter¬ 
nity  in  a  furnace  of  fire  would  be  his  punishment 
for  scoffing.  Dealing  with  individuals  he  had 
not  the  heart  to  think  of  hell-fire. 

It  is  true  that  the  Nazarene’s  belief  in  eternal 
fiery  damnation  was  the  mainspring  of  his  zeal. 
He  felt  that  he  must  hasten  on  along  the  country 
roads  warning  every  man  he  met.  In  towns  and 
villages  he  gathered  crowds  and  warned  them. 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


209 


He  sent  out  his  pupils  to  spread  the  alarm.  Once 
he  sent  out  seventy  mendicant  friars  to  spread  it. 
Yet  his  belief  never  went  deep  enough  to  affect 
his  character.  Second-hand  beliefs  rarely  do  go 
deep  enough  to  affect  character.  The  Nazarene’s 
sweetness,  his  gentleness,  his  compassion,  and  his 
wonderful  buoyancy — his  joy,  as  he  called  it — re¬ 
mained  unchanged.  There  was  nothing  grim 
about  him — nothing  prefiguring  the  role  of  cruelty 
his  cousin  had  thrust  upon  him. 

A  strange  credulity  he  may  seem  to  have  shown 
in  allowing  his  cousin  to  dominate  his  thought  at 
all.  But  others — throngs  of  them — were  as  im¬ 
pressed  by  his  cousin.  The  man  in  weird  toggery, 
out  there  by  the  river,  took  Palestine  by  storm. 
Even  priests  and  Levites  travelled  from  Jeru¬ 
salem  to  hear  him.  He  was  the  reigning  sensa¬ 
tion. 

As  strange,  almost,  seem  the  Nazarene’s  reasons 
for  believing  that  whatever  his  cousin  said  must 
be  true.  Nothing  recorded  about  the  Baptist 
marks  him  as  especially  great.  Had  he  been 
really  a  reincarnation  of  Elijah,  it  by  no  means 
followed  that  his  ideas  regarding  unquenchable 


210 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


fire  were  necessarily  sound.  As  for  the  phrase 
quoted  from  an  old-time  prophet,  it  mentioned  a 
voice  of  one  crying  in  the  wilderness,  and  any¬ 
body’s  voice  crying  in  any  wilderness  at  any  time 
would  have  fulfilled  it,  granted  only  that  the  voice 
said  the  things  that  were  written  in  the  prophecy. 
From  our  modern  viewpoint,  we  fail  to  see  why 
the  Nazarene’s  cousin,  by  reading  the  things  writ¬ 
ten  in  the  prophecy  and  then  crying  them  out  in 
a  wilderness,  proved  himself  to  be  the  very  man 
the  old-time  prophet  had  in  mind. 

But  the  modern  viewpoint  was  wholly  absent 
from  the  Jewish  world  of  the  First  Century,  A.  D. 
When  we  assert  that  the  Nazarene  rabbi  argued 
fallaciously,  we  are  merely  asserting  that,  on  his 
scholarly  side,  he  was  a  First-Century  Jew.  In 
matters  of  scholarship,  all  First-Century  Jews 
argued  fallaciously.  It  was  the  way. 

So,  instead  of  excusing  the  young  rabbi’s  threats 
of  eternal  damnation  by  denying  that  he  meant 
what  he  said,  we  may  do  the  logical  thing  and 
declare  that  he  had  a  great  deal  too  much  faith  in 
his  cousin.  As  no  one  has  ever  made  John  the 
Baptist  a  god,  we  may  without  irreverence  go 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


21  I 


further,  and  instead  of  thinking  out  ways  of  escape 
from  his  hell-fire,  content  ourselves  by  recognizing 
that  he  was  unworthy  to  unloose  the  latchet  of 
the  Nazarene’s  shoes  and  quite  mistaken  about 
hell. 


XXVI 


The  most  revered  image  ever  fashioned  by  de¬ 
voted  hands  represents  a  living  man  spiked  to  a 
cross,  and  after  all  these  centuries  it  still  evokes 
gratitude  and  adoration.  What  does  the  image 
mean? 

Theology  replies  by  quoting  a  sentence  from  a 
narrative  written  by  the  victim’s  favourite  pupil. 
He  was  a  mystic.  He  was  a  theologian.  He  was 
by  nature  a  poet.  But  like  other  mystics,  other 
theologians,  and  other  poets,  he  lacked  now  and 
then  the  realistic  sense,  and  in  matters  so  vitally 
interesting  to  mankind  the  realistic  sense  is  im¬ 
portant. 

What  have  we — definitely — in  his  interpretation 
of  the  Nazarene’s  tragic  death?  He  says  that  it 
represented  God’s  love  for  the  world.  He  says 
that  God  had  an  only-begotten  son,  implying  that 
only  the  Nazarene  was  a  son  of  God.  He  says  that 
God  gave  his  son,  implying  that  his  son’s  fate  was 


212 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


213 


predestined  and  inevitable,  not  a  martyrdom  freely 
sought.  He  says  that  those  who  believe  in  God’s 
son  shall  not  perish  but  have  eternal  life. 

All  this  is  said  so  devoutly  that  it  slips  into  the 
mind  unprotested,  yet  it  will  be  found  to  differ 
in  certain  very  notable  respects  from  the  teachings 
of  the  man  himself.  According  to  the  man  him¬ 
self,  obedience,  not  belief,  was  the  price  of  eternal 
life.  According  to  the  man  himself,  all  men  were 
sons  of  God.  According  to  the  man  himself  he 
walked  freely  to  his  death.  According  to  the  man 
himself,  his  death  represented,  not  God’s  love  for 
the  world,  but  his  own  love  for  the  world. 

Because  of  its  dramatic  appeal  and  its  grip  upon 
emotion,  the  Nazarene’s  death  and  its  interpreta¬ 
tion  quite  overshadow  his  life  and  its  interpreta¬ 
tion  in  the  minds  of  believers.  This  was  so  from 
the  first.  Even  his  pupils,  though  for  three  years 
they  had  been  close  to  the  living  man,  watching 
his  benevolent  career  as  a  healer,  witnessing  his 
endeavours  to  reconstruct  character,  listening  to 
his  instructions  regarding  conduct,  became  so 
hypnotized  by  the  supposed  mystery  of  his  death 
that,  in  reading  their  sermons  and  letters,  we  get 


214 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


the  impression  that  they  thought  of  him  less  as  a 
man  who  had  lived  than  as  a  god  who  had 
died. 

Yet  he  himself  rarely  spoke  of  his  approaching 
death.  He  said  little  by  way  of  interpreting  it. 
To  him,  the  great  outstanding  futurity,  far  more 
impressive,  was  his  second  coming.  It  is  to  his 
followers,  and  not  to  the  man  himself,  that  we  owe 
the  long-drawn,  laboured,  metaphysical  explana¬ 
tions  of  his  end.  It  is  to  his  followers,  and  not  to 
the  man  himself,  that  we  owe  the  announcement 
that  men,  by  believing  that  he  suffered  in  their 
stead,  could  escape  the  consequence  of  sin. 

Among  his  early  followers,  who  were  Jews, 
there  developed  soon  after  his  martyrdom  a  theory 
that  he  had  been  a  kind  of  sacrificial  victim, 
slaughtered  on  a  hill-top  as  bulls,  heifers,  rams, 
and  sheep  were  still  being  slaughtered  in  the 
temple.  In  advancing  this  view,  one  of  those  early 
followers  actually  says  that  the  Nazarene  was  a 
sacrifice  to  God  for  an  odour  of  a  sweet  smell. 
Those  are  the  words.  To  First-Century  Jewish 
Christians  they  were  not  offensive,  and  there  are 
theologians  even  to-day  who  teach  that  Jehovah 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


215 


instituted  the  Jewish  sacrificial  system  for  the 
special  purpose  of  preparing  men’s  minds  to  un¬ 
derstand  the  death  of  a  young  rabbi  hundreds  of 
years  later. 

But  an  understanding  of  the  Jewish  sacrificial 
system  weakens  the  analogy.  When  you  led  a  bull 
to  the  temple  and  gave  it  to  the  priests  you  lost  the 
bull.  It  was  a  kind  of  penance.  If,  after  the 
priests  had  eaten  part  of  the  bull  and  burned  the 
rest,  you  felt  that  you  had  induced  Jehovah  to 
overlook  your  sins,  it  was  not  only  because  the  bull 
had  suffered  for  them,  but  also  and  more  partic¬ 
ularly  because  you  had  suffered  for  them.  In  the 
death  of  the  young  rabbi,  the  young  rabbi  alone 
suffered. 

Innumerable  honest  men  have  repudiated 
Christianity  because  they  could  not  see  that  one 
man’s  death  atoned  for  another  man’s  sins. 
They  had  little  respect  for  a  God  who  could 
tolerate  such  an  arrangement,  still  less  for  a  God 
in  whose  conscience  such  an  arrangement  could 
originate.  The  entire  theological  plan  of  salva¬ 
tion  seemed  to  them  immoral,  and  when  they  were 
told  that  God  admired  men  for  believing  in  an 


2l6 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


immoral  plan  of  salvation,  and  gave  them  eternal 
life  for  believing,  they  rebelled. 

Then,  too,  many  an  honest  man  has  seen  in  the 
theological  plan  of  salvation  a  vast  futility.  How 
could  a  single  victim,  by  merely  suffering  a  few 
hours,  atone  for  the  sins  of  countless  millions? 

Even  those  who  believed  in  the  theological  plan 
of  salvation  have  had  their  periods  of  wondering 
if  the  whole  dogma  were  not  a  sham,  of  blaming 
themselves  for  wondering,  and  of  regaining  their 
peace  of  mind  by  concluding  that  God,  in  his  in¬ 
finite  wisdom  and  goodness,  was  considerably  less 
rational  and  considerably  less  honest  than  his  chil¬ 
dren  are. 

But  when  did  the  Nazarene  ever  tolerate  the 
theological  plan  of  salvation?  It  rejects  his  plain 
teaching.  It  accuses  him  of  teaching  doctrines 
utterly  alien  to  his  thought.  He  never  spoke  of 
his  approaching  death  as  the  execution  of  a  sub¬ 
stitute.  He  never  said  that  because  of  his  death 
other  men’s  sins  were  to  go  unpunished.  He  never 
hinted  that  his  death  would  benefit  any  one  in  the 
last  judgment.  Human  beings  would  then  be 
judged  on  their  merits  solely.  If  they  had  obeyed, 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF  217 

he  would  give  them  eternal  life.  If  they  had  dis¬ 
obeyed,  he  would  damn  them.  And  yet  this  same 
Nazarene  deliberately  sought  martyrdom.  Why? 

The  question  brings  us  face  to  face  with  one  of 
the  strangest  facts  in  all  history.  Looking  deeply 
into  the  thing,  we  see  that  it  was  neither  Jews  nor 
Romans  who  killed  the  Nazarene.  It  was  books! 
He  thought  that  old  prophetic  scrolls  predicted 
his  execution.  Those  prophecies  must  be  fulfilled. 

Reading  them  now,  we  see  clearly  that  not  one  of 
the  prophets  had  the  Nazarene  in  mind  when  they 
described  a  servant  of  God  who  must  suffer.  The 
servant  of  God  was  an  imaginary  figure,  personify¬ 
ing  an  entire  generation.  The  entire  generation 
was  to  suffer.  A  remnant  would  be  saved.  Then 
the  world  would  improve. 

The  prophets,  it  will  be  remembered,  were  up¬ 
start  laymen  assuming  to  speak  for  God.  They 
had  no  credentials  beyond  their  own  accounts  of 
marvellous  ordinations  whereby  Jehovah  had  made 
them  his  spokesmen.  To  get  a  hearing  and  keep 
it,  they  used  spiritual  terrorism.  God,  they  said, 
was  about  to  bring  hideous  punishment  upon  his 
people  because  of  their  sins. 


2l8 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


However,  there  were  limits  beyond  which  spiri¬ 
tual  terrorism  never  quite  dared  to  go.  Old  legends 
told  how  God  had  turned  upon  his  people  many 
centuries  before.  He  had  not  drowned  the  entire 
race.  Moreover,  he  had  promised  not  to  send 
another  flood,  and  had  created  the  rainbow  as  a 
sign  that  he  would  keep  his  word.  From  time  to 
time  rainbows  were  still  seen. 

Again,  spiritual  terrorism  found  it  necessary, 
when  picturing  the  new  severities  God  had  in  store 
for  his  people,  to  reckon  with  sentimental  consid¬ 
erations.  The  wrath  of  God  had  been  a  long  time 
accumulating.  Generation  after  generation  had 
offended.  As  there  was  no  resurrection,  they  could 
not  be  punished.  When,  therefore,  the  accumu¬ 
lated  wrath  of  God  descended,  the  living  would 
be  suffering  for  the  sins  of  the  dead  as  well  as  for 
their  own  sins.  Even  the  righteous  would  suffer,  as 
the  calamities  foretold  were  to  be  national  ca¬ 
lamities.  But  there  would  be  something  magnifi¬ 
cent  in  the  sufferings  of  the  righteous.  They  would 
in  a  sense  be  purchasing  an  improved  world  for 
posterity.  Because  they  had  suffered,  posterity 
would  escape  further  visitations  of  the  divine  fury. 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


219 


All  this  is  very  Jewish.  It  portrays  a  very  Jew¬ 
ish  God  who,  having  indulged  in  a  wild  outburst 
of  rage,  would  feel  better.  Very  Jewish,  too,  was 
the  emergence  of  that  imaginary  figure,  the  ser¬ 
vant  of  God,  personifying  the  righteous  who 
would  suffer  for  the  sins  of  past  generations  and 
to  the  advantage  of  generations  yet  to  come.  Per¬ 
sonification  was  instinctive — a  natural  impulse  of 
the  Jewish  mind.  That  mind  saw  the  Jewish  race 
as  a  person,  by  name  Israel.  It  saw  the  various 
tribes  as  persons,  and  called  them  by  the  names  of 
their  supposed  progenitors.  A  Jewish-Christian 
even  called  the  spirit  of  God  a  person.  But  when 
the  old  Jewish  prophets  spoke  of  the  martyr  gen¬ 
eration  as  a  person,  it  never  entered  their  thought 
that  the  time  would  come  when  a  young  Jewish 
student  of  their  writings  would  think  himself  defi¬ 
nitely  pointed  out  therein. 

Just  this  was  what  happened.  Mistaking  the 
figurative  servant  of  God  for  the  Messiah,  the 
student  of  old  prophetic  scrolls  became  convinced 
that,  inasmuch  as  he  was  the  Messiah,  he  must  seek 
and  find  martyrdom.  He  was  perhaps  the  first  to 
confuse  the  ideas.  Perhaps  others  had  confused 


220  THE  MAN  HIMSELF 

them  before  him.  At  all  events  he  was  not  alone 
in  confusing  them.  By  way  of  proving  his  Mes- 
siahship,  his  followers  quoted  ancient  verses  de¬ 
scribing  the  servant  of  God  and  made  converts  by 
so  doing.  It  was  thought  good  logic. 

But  the  young  rabbi  never  looked  upon  his  ap¬ 
proaching  martyrdom  as  a  consequence  of  dead 
men’s  sins.  Nor  did  he  think  that  his  martyrdom 
would  usher  in  a  reign  of  happiness  upon  earth. 
The  earth  itself  was  soon  to  perish.  In  seeking  to 
fulfil  prophecy  he  permitted  himself  the  same 
latitude  of  reinterpretation  as  when  fulfilling  the 
law.  In  a  new  sense,  wholly  his  own,  he  would 
give  his  life  as  a  ransom  for  many.  If  dying  for  his 
gospel  could  buy  acceptance  of  his  gospel,  then, 
in  order  to  ransom  men  from  bondage  to  them¬ 
selves,  he  could  die  willingly.  He  believed  that 
where  persuasion  and  threats  and  patient  teaching 
had  failed,  his  crucifixion  would  succeed.  Lifted 
up,  he  would  draw  all  men  to  him,  he  is  said  to 
have  declared.  Of  those  so  drawn,  whole  multi¬ 
tudes  would  escape  condemnation  in  the  last  judg¬ 
ment. 

Thus  the  idea  of  martyrdom,  though  mistakenly 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


221 


derived  from  old  Jewish  scrolls  not  one  of  which 
designated  the  Nazarene  as  a  martyr,  harmonized 
perfectly  with  his  conception  of  his  mission  and 
with  his  character.  He  would  die  for  his  friends 
— greater  love  had  no  man  than  that.  His  death 
would  not  save  them;  only  obeying  him  could;  but 
his  death,  by  its  shock,  by  its  appeal  to  the  affec¬ 
tions,  and  by  its  proof  of  his  sincerity,  would  force 
men  to  obey. 

Little  did  he  imagine  how  soon  the  theorists  and 
metaphysicians  would  find  in  his  death  the  basis 
for  a  plan  of  salvation  that  attached  supreme  im¬ 
portance  to  things  quite  different  from  obeying. 


XXVII 


Tiberius  CAESAR  ruled  Judea  through  a  gover¬ 
nor  who  killed  himself  after  being  sent  to  Rome  to 
answer  for  his  violence,  his  cruelties,  and  his  habit 
of  executing  Jews  without  even  the  form  of  a 
trial.  This  man,  Pontius  Pilate  by  name,  detested 
Jews  and  took  a  vicious  delight  in  insulting  them. 
Knowing  their  hatred  of  idolatry  and  their 
abhorrence  of  graven  images,  he  made  his  legion¬ 
aries  enter  Jerusalem  with  figures  of  the  god- 
emperor  on  their  standards. 

Martyrdom  at  the  hands  of  such  a  despot  was  not 
difficult  to  obtain,  so  to  Jerusalem  went  the  Naza- 
rene,  accompanied  by  his  pupils.  He  chose  a  time 
when  the  city  would  be  crowded  and  the  Roman 
authorities  in  a  nervous  mood,  ready  to  deal  harsh¬ 
ly  with  any  one  who  caused  a  disturbance.  Then, 
too,  it  was  a  time  when  an  uproar  within  the  Jew¬ 
ish  church  would  most  deeply  offend  the  church 
authorities.  Passover  week  it  was. 


222 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


223 


That  the  young  rabbi  counted  on  being  haled 
before  the  Roman  authorities  and  put  to  death  at 
their  command,  is  made  clear  by  what  he  told  his 
pupils  on  the  way  to  Jerusalem,  and  other  things 
he  told  them  show  us  how  he  expected  to  get  him¬ 
self  delivered  up  to  the  Roman  authorities.  He 
said  the  Jewish  clergy  would  arrange  all  that.  He 
knew  how  he  was  going  to  make  them  do  so. 

But  he  had  not  foreseen  the  outburst  of  enthusi¬ 
asm  that  was  to  mark  his  arrival  and  hasten  the 
very  result  he  desired.  As  he  was  riding  up  to  the 
city  a  great  crowd  collected,  throwing  down  their 
cloaks  before  him,  strewing  the  road  with  branches 
hacked  from  trees,  and  cheering  him  as  rightful 
king  of  the  Jews. 

Just  who  these  enthusiasts  were,  just  what  they 
thought  they  were  doing,  and  just  how  much  ear¬ 
nestness  there  was  behind  their  enthusiasm,  no 
one  knows.  But  the  thing  had  all  the  look  of  a 
nationalist  demonstration  in  a  Roman  colony.  It 
was  sure  to  be  heard  from  later.  In  Jerusalem,  a 
little  place  of  about  forty  thousand,  nothing  strik¬ 
ingly  unusual  could  occur  without  attracting  gen¬ 
eral  attention.  This  particular  occurrence  made 


224 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


so  much  talk  throughout  the  city  that  children 
knew  of  it,  and  cheered  the  Nazarene  in  the  temple. 
They,  too,  called  him  king. 

When  that  happened,  he  showed  pleasure.  He 
had  shown  no  displeasure  when  the  crowds  cheered 
him  as  king  on  his  way  into  town,  for  he  under¬ 
stood  perfectly  what  a  nationalist  demonstration  in 
a  Roman  colony  could  lead  to. 

All  the  circumstances  made  it  appear  ominous. 
Except  for  a  legend  that  says  he  visited  Jerusalem 
at  the  age  of  twelve,  there  is  nothing  to  suggest 
that  he  had  ever  been  there  before;  the  great  bulk 
of  the  population,  never  having  heard  of  him  until 
now,  asked  who  he  was;  so,  while  Galilee  had 
learned  to  interpret  the  man  and  his  claims,  as  both 
he  and  his  staff  had  been  educating  Galilee  for 
years,  Jerusalem  would  have  no  comprehension  of 
him.  He  would  be  regarded  as  a  pretender  to  the 
Jewish  throne.  As  such,  he  would  be  executed. 

But  he  had  come  up  to  the  capital  with  a  set 
plan — i.e.,  to  make  the  chief  priests  and  elders  de¬ 
liver  him  into  the  hands  of  Pilate,  and  this  he 
proceeded  to  do.  Daily  he  taught  in  the  temple. 
By  what  right?  When  asked,  he  refused  to  say. 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


225 


Daily  he  attacked  the  reactionaries,  calling  them 
vipers  and  the  offspring  of  vipers.  Daily  he  made 
fresh  enemies  by  letting  pedants  and  sectarians 
try  to  catch  him  in  his  words  and  catching  them  in 
theirs.  Daily  he  conducted  a  drugless  clinic  in  the 
temple  itself,  winning  a  popular  acclaim  that  af¬ 
frighted  the  orthodox — allowed  to  keep  on,  this 
radical  from  a  despised  town  in  Lower  Galilee 
would  have  the  nation  at  his  back,  and  where  would 
sacerdotalism  be  then? 

All  through  those  days  of  bidding  for  martyr¬ 
dom,  he  was  tactless,  casting  pearls  before  swine, 
using  invective  instead  of  persuasion,  and  so  be¬ 
lying  his  real  character  that,  in  judging  the  kind  of 
man  he  was,  the  historian  must  take  the  situation  for 
what  it  was — especially  one  notorious  episode,  his 
onslaught  on  the  tradesmen  and  money-changers. 

A  large  yard  surrounded  the  temple,  and  there 
the  dealers  in  oxen,  sheep,  and  doves  supplied  wor¬ 
shippers  with  victims  for  the  altar.  To  the  temple 
priests  this  toleration  of  business  in  the  yard  out¬ 
side  seemed  no  more  a  sacrilege  than  does  the  col¬ 
lection  of  money  in  church  seem  a  sacrilege  to  us. 
But  the  Nazarene  was  shocked. 


226 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


At  any  other  time  he  would  have  contented  him¬ 
self  with  admonishing  the  offenders;  violence  he 
had  never  used  thus  far;  violence  his  whole  teach¬ 
ing  had  forbidden.  Now,  however,  he  could  use 
violence  for  effect.  He  rushed  upon  the  tradesmen 
and  money-changers  in  a  fury  of  indignation,  over¬ 
turning  tables  and  stools  and  brandishing  a  whip. 

Such  scenes  as  this  were  not  wanted  by  the  Jew¬ 
ish  clergy  during  Passover  week,  of  all  times,  nor 
were  the  clergy  flattered  when  the  Nazarene  told 
them  that  under  their  management  the  place  of 
prayer  had  become  a  den  of  thieves.  Along  with 
other  affronts,  the  affair  did  precisely  what  the 
young  rabbi  from  Nazareth  intended  it  to  do.  One 
night  a  gang  of  clergy,  beadles,  and  soldiers  caught 
him  and  dragged  him  before  the  high  priest. 

When  questioned  by  that  dignitary,  he  made  out 
a  bad  case  for  himself,  purposely.  With  a  boldness 
deliberately  calculated  to  scandalize  and  with  a 
mode  of  statement  surest  to  horrify,  he  said  that  he 
was  the  Messiah,  that  he  was  the  son  of  God,  that 
he  would  be  seen  sitting  at  the  right  hand  of  power, 
and  that  he  would  come  on  the  clouds  of  heaven. 

By  all  standards  of  Jewish  ecclesiastical  law, 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


227 


this  was  blasphemy.  The  penalty  under  Jewish 
ecclesiastical  law  was  death.  But  the  day  had 
gone  by  when  the  priesthood  could  execute  its  own 
sentences.  In  order  to  get  the  Nazarene  put  to 
death,  it  would  be  necessary  to  secure  his  condem¬ 
nation  under  Roman  law.  That  seemed  easy.  He 
had  figured  in  a  nationalist  demonstration.  In  the 
temple  he  had  let  children  cheer  him  as  king. 

Next  day  he  was  taken  before  Pilate  and  charged 
with  having  laid  claim  to  the  throne  of  his  ances¬ 
tor,  David.  When  the  governor  asked  him  if  he 
was  king  of  the  Jews,  he  replied  that  he  was,  care¬ 
fully  refraining  from  any  attempt  to  explain  in 
what  sense  he  used  the  words. 

With  his  habitual  scorn  of  all  things  Jewish, 
Pilate  at  first  refused  to  dignify  the  alleged  pre¬ 
tender  by  punishing  him.  He  refused  to  dignify 
his  captors  by  admitting  the  importance  of  the  ar¬ 
rest  they  had  made.  For  some  minutes  it  looked 
to  the  temple  gang  as  if  the  Nazarene  might  be 
let  off.  But  a  great  crowd  had  collected — a  crowd 
principally  composed  of  his  enemies.  They  howled 
for  his  conviction,  the  governor  yielded,  and  the 
man  of  Nazareth  was  led  away  to  be  crucified. 


228  THE  MAN  HIMSELF 

His  torturers  from  that  moment  forward  were 
not  Jews.  They  were  not  Romans.  They  were 
Graeco-Syrians  serving  in  the  Roman  legion  for 
hire — anti-Semites,  all.  Great  fun  they  had,  pla¬ 
guing  this  Jew  whom  they  took  for  a  would-be 
kinglet.  They  dressed  him  up  as  a  mock  emperor, 
stuck  a  crown  of  thorns  on  his  head,  and  gave  him 
a  stick  for  a  sceptre.  They  hooted  him.  They 
mauled  and  spat  upon  him.  When  they  crucified 
him  they  hung  a  jeering  label  on  his  cross,  making 
sport  of  his  royal  majesty. 

It  was  a  martyrdom  tragic  beyond  anything  his 
followers  have  seen  in  it  and  the  most  that  they 
have  seen  was  not  there.  It  represented  no  inter¬ 
vention  between  an  utterly  depraved  race  and  a 
God  at  once  vindictive  and  unfair.  There  was  no 
utterly  depraved  race.  There  was  no  vindictive 
God,  no  God  capable  of  such  unfairness.  Still 
less  was  the  young  rabbi’s  martyrdom  a  symbol 
of  his  rejection  by  his  own.  The  world  was  not 
repudiating  the  discoverer  of  the  humanity  in  God, 
the  discoverer  of  the  divinity  in  man,  the  discover¬ 
er  of  a  power  making  for  righteousness,  the  dis¬ 
coverer  of  the  new  birth.  He  was  crucified  by 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF  229 

Jew-baiters  let  loose  upon  him  by  a  governor  of 
Jews  who  hated  Jews.  Even  the  clergy  who  took 
him  to  the  governor  acted  less  from  hostility  to  his 
gospel  than  from  hostility  to  the  Nazarene.  He 
had  not  given  them  an  opportunity  of  understand¬ 
ing  his  gospel.  It  was  a  gospel  no  one  trained  in 
legalism  and  ritualism  could  comprehend  in  a 
few  days.  Meanwhile  his  attitude  toward  the 
clergy  any  one  could  comprehend  in  a  moment — 
from  the  first  he  had  systematically  scandalized 
and  affronted  them.  Nothing  is  further  from  the 
truth  than  to  picture  him  as  a  kind  of  sacrificial 
lamb.  Sacrificial  lambs  do  not  court  death.  The 
Nazarene  deliberately  brought  death  upon  him¬ 
self. 

The  profoundly,  the  unspeakably  tragic  thing 
about  his  death,  and  the  thing  every  one  overlooks, 
was  its  futility.  He  believed  that  his  death  would 
win  acceptance  for  the  gospel  of  obedience.  In¬ 
stead,  because  misinterpreted  almost  at  once  by  his 
own  followers,  whose  misinterpretation  became 
the  basis  of  theology,  it  replaced  his  gospel  of  obe¬ 
dience  with  a  gospel  of  subterfuge. 

His  agony  in  the  garden,  his  betrayal,  his  de- 


230 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


sertion  by  his  pupils,  his  humiliation,  his  hours 
of  torment  on  the  cross,  his  utter  anguish  of 
soul,  even  the  crazed  paroxysm  during  which  for 
an  instant  he  thought  that  God  had  abandoned 
him — all  this  he  suffered  in  the  hope  that  he  was 
ransoming  men  from  bondage  to  themselves,  draw¬ 
ing  them  all  to  him,  making  them  obey  him. 

It  was  a  hope  that  is  still  unfulfilled.  For  there 
was  a  more  elaborate  way  of  being  saved,  thought 
the  theologians,  than  by  obeying — more  elaborate 
and  at  the  same  time  easier. 


XXVIII 


In  AN  unmarked  grave,  somewhere  in  Palestine, 
lies  the  dust  that  was  once  the  Nazarene’s  body. 
To  recover  the  tomb  where  they  supposed  his  body 
had  lain  for  three  days,  thousands  of  Crusaders 
sacrificed  their  lives,  but  we  hear  of  no  early 
Christian  pilgrimage  to  that  tomb,  nor  does  any 
tomb  whatever  appear  to  have  been  pointed  out 
as  the  Nazarene’s  during  the  First  Century,  A.D. 
In  the  entire  mass  of  legend  concealing  the  truth 
as  to  what  became  of  his  body,  the  spot  where  it 
was  buried  is  never  indicated.  Why? 

One  explanation,  which,  if  correct,  explains  also 
why  the  young  rabbi’s  followers  readily  accepted 
the  stories  that  told  how  his  body  rose  from  the 
grave  and  was  seen  by  numerous  witnesses  and 
eventually  went  up  into  the  sky,  is  an  explanation 
suggested  by  the  case  against  him  under  Roman 
criminal  law  and  at  the  same  time  by  the  case 
against  him  under  Jewish  ecclesiastical  law. 


231 


232 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


He  had  been  executed  for  an  alleged  attempt  to 
restore  the  Jewish  monarchy.  Any  one  connected 
with  him  was  therefore  in  danger  of  being  charged 
with  participation  in  the  alleged  nationalist  con¬ 
spiracy.  Under  Jewish  ecclesiastical  law  the 
Nazarene  had  been  found  guilty  of  a  capital  crime 
— that  of  blasphemy.  Were  not  his  pupils  likewise 
blasphemous  under  that  law,  and  would  not  ordi¬ 
nary  prudence  bid  them  disperse  and  hide  and  re¬ 
main  in  hiding  until  both  the  Roman  political 
authorities  and  the  Jewish  ecclesiastical  authori¬ 
ties  had  begun  to  forget  the  Nazarene? 

This  is  speculation — the  kind  of  speculation  a 
historical  novelist  might  permit  himself.  It  is 
perhaps  erroneous  speculation,  although  mis¬ 
leading.  But  it  gives  us  at  least  a  possible  clue  to 
a  mystery  that  would  otherwise  be  incapable  of 
solution.  If  the  Nazarene’s  pupils  had  dispersed 
and  gone  into  hiding  when  they  found  that  their 
master  was  to  be  executed  as  a  pretender  to  the 
Jewish  throne,  then,  obviously,  they  never  saw 
what  the  Roman  legionaries  did  to  his  body 
after  his  death  or  where  the  Roman  legion¬ 
aries  threw  it,  nor  did  they  hear  the  requiem  of 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


233 

anti-Semitic  laughter  that  was  his  only  burial 
rite. 

Observe.  This  is  still  nothing  but  speculation. 
No  one  knows  what  happened.  No  one  can  find 

1.  .  Ml  _ _ 

out.  But,  supposing  the  speculation  to  be  sound — 
many  a  mere  speculation  turns  out  to  have  been 
sound — it  follows  that  when  the  Nazarene’s  pupils 
dared  to  venture  forth  again  and  reassemble,  they 
had  no  first-hand  knowledge  of  what  had  occurred, 
and  no  first-hand  evidence  with  which  to  correct 
the  stories  that  already  abounded. 

Wondrously  beautiful  stories  those  were — a  rich 
man  had  come  and  taken  the  master’s  body  and 
reverently  buried  it  in  a  new  tomb;  an  angel,  whose 
appearance  was  like  lightning  and  whose  robe  was 
as  white  as  snow,  had  opened  the  tomb;  forth  had 
gone  the  master  to  perform  miracles,  to  speak  fresh 
words  of  inspiration  and  comfort,  and  finally  to 
ascend  into  heaven  and  sit  down  at  the  right  hand 
of  God. 

In  course  of  time  the  stories  grew.  At  the  mo¬ 
ment  of  the  master’s  death  an  earthquake  had  oc¬ 
curred,  it  was  said,  and  the  veil  of  the  temple  had 
been  split  in  two;  moreover,  it  was  now  possible 


234 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


to  name  the  people  to  whom  he  had  appeared  in 
the  body  and  to  tell  how  they  had  acted  and  just 
what  the  master  did;  when  Thomas  doubted,  the 
master  had  shown  his  wounded  hands;  once,  to 
prove  that  his  body  was  a  physical  body,  like  any 
man’s,  he  had  eaten  before  witnesses;  the  story  told 
what  he  ate;  he  ate  broiled  fish.  Also,  there  was  a 
story  that,  after  the  Nazarene’s  resurrection,  many 
bodies  of  the  saints  that  had  slept  had  come  out  of 
their  graves  and  entered  the  Holy  City  and  been 
seen  there. 

Even  the  story  of  the  master’s  ascension  into  the 
sky  took  on  new  details — his  eleven  surviving  pu¬ 
pils  had  watched  him  go  up;  a  cloud  had  received 
him  out  of  their  sight;  two  white-robed  strangers 
had  then  appeared  and  told  them  that  he  would  one 
day  return  in  the  same  manner. 

This  rapid  growth  of  legend  ought  not  to  sur¬ 
prise  us.  The  time  and  the  place  account  for  all 
that.  It  was  the  First  Century,  A.D. — in  the 
Orient. 

The  Nazarene’s  pupils,  to  be  sure,  had  seen 
nothing  to  substantiate  such  stories,  but  neither,  in 
all  probability,  had  they  seen  anything  to  invali- 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


23S 


date  such  stories,  and  the  master  himself  had  be¬ 
lieved  in  a  bodily  resurrection — indeed,  he  had 
declared  that,  if  men  destroyed  the  temple  of  his 
body,  he  would  rebuild  it  in  three  days.  What 
wonder,  then,  that  his  pupils,  when  self-styled  eye¬ 
witnesses  told  how  his  body  had  risen  and  for  forty 
days  walked  the  earth  and  at  last  ascended  into  the 
sky,  believed? 

And  what  wonder  that  his  biographers  wrote 
the  legends  into  their  narratives  in  good  faith? 
By  that  time,  the  entire  church  believed  them  and 
believed  that  a  bodily  resurrection  was  in  store  for 
every  man. 

Still,  the  idea  of  one’s  own  body  coming  back  to 
life  and  ascending  into  heaven  presented  certain 
difficulties,  and  the  most  celebrated  of  First-Cen¬ 
tury  theologians  hastened  to  deal  with  them.  In 
an  effort  to  make  the  whole  thing  convincing,  he 
said  that  on  the  last  day  a  trumpet  would  sound.  At 
the  sound  of  the  trumpet  all  the  dead  would  rise 
and  be  caught  up  into  the  clouds  to  meet  the  now 
deified  Nazarene  in  the  air.  The  living  would  also 
be  caught  up.  But  while  both  the  living  and  the 
dead  would  have  bodies,  a  kind  of  instantaneous 


236  THE  MAN  HIMSELF 

transubstantiation  would  occur  at  the  sound  of 
the  last  trump.  In  a  moment,  in  the  twinkling  of 
an  eye,  terrestrial  bodies  would  be  turned  into 
celestial  bodies. 

Later  on,  theologians  wrote  the  Apostle’s  Creed, 
a  formula  still  recited  in  church.  It  proclaims  the 
resurrection  of  the  body,  though  hardly  a  Christian 
to-day  thinks  his  body  will  rise  from  the  grave,  or 
cares  what  becomes  of  it,  or  sees  anything  noble  or 
reasonable  or  consoling  in  the  idea  of  a  bodily 
resurrection  in  his  own  case. 

But  woe  to  all  who  dare  suggest  that,  in  an  un¬ 
marked  grave,  somewhere  in  Palestine,  lies  the 
dust  that  was  once  the  Nazarene’s  body,  and  woe  to 
all  who,  though  believing  that  the  Nazarene  sur¬ 
vives  death  and  possesses  life  eternal,  reject  a  the¬ 
ology  in  which  legend,  instead  of  becoming  an  aid 
to  faith,  becomes  an  obstacle  to  faith! 

These  Easter  legends  of  the  Nazarene’s  bodily 
resurrection  have  rare  beauty  and  charm  and  a 
symbolism  no  one  would  part  with.  They  are 
an  obstacle  to  faith  only  when  theology  falsifies 
their  character  by  denying  that  they  are  legends. 
Then  comes  trouble.  For  there  are  discrepancies, 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


237 


all  too  conspicuous  then,  and  inconsistencies,  dis¬ 
turbing  then,  and  affronts  to  that  sense  of  reality 
which  tells  us  that  truth  is  reasonable.  Out  of  such 
embarrassments  grows  a  suspicion  of  imposture — 
a  feeling  that  the  Nazarene’s  biographers  knew  the 
facts  as  to  what  became  of  the  body,  and  covered 
up  the  facts,  and  lied. 

They  never  knew  the  facts.  They  had  no  means 
of  finding  out  the  facts.  They  thought  the  legends 
were  true,  and,  with  entire  artlessness  and  sinceri¬ 
ty,  passed  them  on.  And  we  in  our  turn  recognize 
a  duty  to  preserve  those  legends,  for,  although 
they  were  legends  only,  it  is  to  them  that  early 
Christianity  owed  its  power  to  survive  the  Naza¬ 
rene’s  crucifixion. 

During  the  First  Century,  A.D.,  there  was  a 
great  dearth  of  logic  everywhere,  and  everywhere 
a  great  dearth  of  critical  insight,  but  of  imagina¬ 
tion  there  was  an  overplus.  Facts  counted  for 
little.  One  legend,  if  only  it  gripped  the  imagina¬ 
tion,  could  overthrow  many  a  fact,  or,  no  matter 
how  distressing  a  fact  might  be,  transfigure  and 
glorify  it.  The  Nazarene  had  been  convicted  of 
blasphemy  by  the  highest  ecclesiastical  court;  he 


238  THE  MAN  HIMSELF 

had  been  tried  for  sedition  before  the  Roman 
governor  himself;  he  had  been  handed  over  to  a 
rabble  of  Graeco-Syrian  Jew-baiters,  who  had  in¬ 
sulted  him,  tortured  him,  and  finally  spiked  him  to 
a  cross,  with  a  comic  label  above  his  head;  he  had 
died.  Yes,  but  had  not  the  very  earth  protested, 
and  had  not  heaven  sent  an  angel  to  free  him  from 
the  tomb,  and  had  not  the  man  of  Nazareth,  by 
reappearing  in  the  flesh  to  resume  his  teaching  and 
repeat  his  miracles  proclaimed  himself  victorious? 
No  power  could  stop  him.  The  Jewish  church 
could  not.  Even  death  could  not.  He  had  burst 
the  bonds  of  death  and  ascended  into  heaven. 
Thence  he  would  come  again  to  judge  the  world 
and  reign.  So  what  had  seemed  a  wholly  ignomini¬ 
ous  defeat  was  in  reality  a  triumph,  his  followers 
said,  and  now  they  began  to  feel  that  from  the  first 
they  had  misunderstood  him — he  had  never  been 
a  man  like  others,  he  had  been  a  god.  His  bodily 
resurrection  proved  it. 

Though  abhorrent  to  moderns,  this  idea  of  a  god 
slain  by  mortals  gripped  the  imagination  of  the 
First  Century,  A.D.,  as  nothing  else  could,  and  the 
stories  of  the  young  rabbi’s  bodily  resurrection 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


239 


were  what  gave  it  its  grip  upon  the  imagination  of 
the  First  Century,  A.D.  Within  an  amazingly 
brief  period,  the  god  slain  by  mortals  had  wor¬ 
shippers  in  Palestine  and  Syria,  worshippers  in 
Asia  Minor,  worshippers  in  the  Aegean  Islands, 
worshippers  in  Greece,  and  even  worshippers  in 
Rome.  Far  and  wide  went  the  new  religion,  carry¬ 
ing  with  it  a  great  load  of  Jewish  mythology,  it  is 
true,  and  gathering  accretions  of  Greek  philosophy 
and  Roman  legalism  as  it  went,  yet  sweeping  on. 
Nor  did  it  make  converts  among  the  submerged 
classes  alone.  From  the  start,  it  won  scholars,  ec- 
clesiasts,  aristocrats,  and  officials.  A  great  company 
of  Jewish  priests  became  Christians.  We  read  also 
of  chief  women  and  of  Greek  women  of  honourable 
estate,  and  of  such  notables  as  Apollos,  a  learned 
Alexandrian;  Sergius  Paulus,  a  pro-consul;  and 
Menaean,  foster-brother  of  Herod  the  tetrarch,  to 
say  nothing  of  Crispus,  who  ruled  a  synagogue,  or 
of  Cornelius  the  centurion,  or  of  a  court  official 
from  upper  Egypt,  or  of  a  distinguished  Jewish 
orator  and  metaphysician  and  writer  named  Paul. 

In  an  unmarked  grave,  all  this  while,  lay  the 
body  concerning  which  such  wonderful  stories 


240 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


were  being  told  in  Ephesus  and  Smyrna,  in  Perga- 
mum,  Thyatira  and  Sardis,  in  Laodicea  and  in 
Corinth,  and  in  the  Empire’s  very  capital.  The 
body  is  now  dust,  but  the  stories,  by  making  real  to 
the  imagination  of  the  First  Century,  A.D.,  the 
Nazarene’s  victory  over  death,  and  by  persuading 
First-Century  minds  that  the  Jew-baiters  had 
killed  a  god,  enabled  thousands  to  listen  attentively 
when  his  followers  spoke  of  the  new  birth,  of  life 
eternal,  of  the  divinity  in  man,  of  the  humanity  in 
God,  and  of  the  power  that  reconstructs  character. 

For  a  thing  had  happened  that  was  more  won¬ 
derful  by  far  than  any  bodily  resurrection  could 
have  been.  The  victim  who,  when  lifted  up  upon 
the  cross,  thought  himself  the  mere  founder  of  a 
new  sect  within  the  Jewish  church,  had  come 
down  from  that  cross  the  founder  of  a  world  reli¬ 
gion. 


XXIX 


In  his  study  of  the  Jewish  chronicles,  the  Naza- 
rene  had  come  upon  an  account  of  King  Solomon 
and  his  harem.  Solomon,  it  appears,  kept  seven 
hundred  wives  and  three  hundred  mistresses.  An 
Egyptian  seems  to  have  been  his  favourite.  The 
rest  were  Moabites,  Ammonites,  Edomites,  Zidoni- 
ans,  and  Hittites.  So  we  read  that  Solomon’s  heart 
was  not  perfect  with  the  Lord  his  God. 

Jehovah,  it  is  true,  had  no  objection  to  Solomon’s 
keeping  a  thousand  wives  and  mistresses,  but  he 
objected  strongly  to  Solomon’s  keeping  a  thousand 
Gentile  wives  and  mistresses.  It  was  dangerous,  as 
the  event  proved.  The  ladies  of  his  harem  turned 
Solomon’s  heart  after  Gentile  gods.  He  took  to 
worshipping  the  Ammonitish  Milcom  and  the 
Zidonian  goddess  Ashtoreth.  Close  to  Jerusalem 
he  built  high  places  for  Chemosh  and  Molech — 
Gentile  divinities,  both. 

These  bits  of  scandal  from  the  old  Jewish  clas- 

241 


242 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


sics  have  an  importance  to-day,  not  on  their  own 
account,  but  because  they  help  us  to  understand  the 
intense  anti-foreignism  that  prevailed  among  the 
Jews.  It  grew  out  of  a  well-grounded  fear  that  any 
contact  with  Gentiles  would  lead  Jews  to  adopt 
Gentile  religions. 

This  fear  was  what  accounted  for  Ezra’s  con¬ 
sternation  when,  on  his  return  to  Palestine,  he 
found  Jews  and  Gentiles  intermarrying.  As  the 
chronicler  reports,  Ezra  tore  his  clothes,  pulled 
out  his  hair  and  beard,  cast  himself  down  before 
the  house  of  God,  and  prayed.  At  his  command  a 
council  was  held,  and,  in  obedience  to  the  council’s 
decision,  all  Jews  who  had  married  Gentiles  sent 
away  their  wives.  We  are  told  that  some  of  those 
Jews  sent  away  wives  by  whom  they  had  children. 

It  is  not  to  be  supposed  that  questions  regarding 
mere  race  purity  interested  the  young  rabbi  of 
Nazareth  when  he  read  these  stories  in  the  old 
Jewish  scrolls.  All  marrying  and  giving  in  mar¬ 
riage  were  soon  to  cease.  But  the  underlying  prin¬ 
ciple  he  recognized.  It  was  a  principle  written 
into  the  ancient  Jewish  law  forbidding  Jews  to 
make  treaties  with  their  Gentile  neighbours.  It 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


243 


was  a  principle  written  into  the  ancient  law  forbid¬ 
ding  even  the  tenth  generation  of  Ammonites  or 
Moabites  to  enter  into  the  assembly  of  the  Lord. 
It  was  a  principle  whose  rejection  led  straight  to 
apostasy,  as  the  Jewish  historians  had  pointed  out 
over  and  over  again. 

In  certain  of  the  ancient  scrolls  which  he  ex¬ 
amined,  the  young  rabbi  had  found  here  and  there 
a  rhapsodic  prediction  that  some  day  all  nations 
would  be  permitted  to  join  the  Jews,  and  he  read 
that  one  prophet  in  particular  was  told  to  be  a 
light  to  the  Gentiles.  But  this  seemingly  amiable 
attitude  toward  the  Gentile  world  was  capable  of 
a  by  no  means  lovely  interpretation.  A  Jewish 
hymn,  in  which  Jehovah  was  represented  as  prom¬ 
ising  his  chosen  people  the  nations  for  their  inheri¬ 
tance,  made  him  tell  his  chosen  people  to  break 
the  nations  with  a  rod  of  iron  and  dash  them  in 
pieces  like  a  potter’s  vessel. 

It  is  true  that  the  young  rabbi  of  Nazareth  be¬ 
lieved  that,  when  he  came  again  to  judge  the  world 
and  reign,  all  nations  would  be  summoned  before 
him.  It  is  true,  moreover,  that  he  had  no  deep- 
rooted  personal  dislike  of  Gentiles;  he  could  con- 


244 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


verse  on  matters  spiritual  with  a  woman  of  Sam¬ 
aria,  though  the  Samaritans  were  not  only  Gentiles 
but  especially  obnoxious  Gentiles  in  that  they  set 
up  to  be  Jews;  he  could  even  make  a  Samaritan  the 
hero  of  one  of  his  most  telling  fables.  Yet  there 
lurked  always  in  his  mind  the  inherited  Jewish  sus¬ 
picion  that  any  contact  with  Gentiles  was  a  bit 
dangerous.  When  sending  out  his  followers  as 
itinerant  propagandists,  he  felt  that  if  they  went 
among  the  Gentiles  their  faith  would  be  corrupted, 
so  ordered  them  to  avoid  Gentiles  completely.  It 
was  a  point  well  taken.  Contact  with  Gentiles  did 
corrupt  his  followers’  faith  later  on,  Hellenizing 
it,  Romanizing  it,  and,  as  some  historians  declare, 
injecting  into  it  Egyptian  superstitions  prevalent 
among  the  Alexandrians. 

Our  missionaries  love  to  quote  a  precept  of  the 
Nazarene’s  that  bids  them  go  far  and  wide  in  the 
earth  and  preach  the  gospel  to  every  creature.  His 
favourite  pupil  says  that  he  said  this,  but  says  that 
he  said  it  after  his  death.  During  his  lifetime,  ac¬ 
cording  to  that  same  favourite  pupil,  he  said  that 
he  had  other  sheep  not  of  the  Jewish  fold;  those 
also  he  must  bring.  Here,  quite  possibly,  we  have 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


245 


a  reliable  transcription  of  what  he  did  say.  But 
those  other  sheep — were  they  to  be  brought  while 
the  world  still  went  its  usual  course?  No,  they 
were  to  be  brought  only  when  the  world’s  last  day 
arrived.  Not  until  then  would  Gentiles  from  the 
east  and  Gentiles  from  the  west  sit  down  with 
Abraham,  Isaac,  and  Jacob.  In  plain  language, 
transcribed  by  writers  much  more  accurate  than 
was  his  favourite  pupil,  the  Nazarene  said  that 
this  unheard-of  marvel  was  to  attend  his  second 
coming. 

During  his  lifetime  he  disregarded  the  Gentile 
world  almost  completely.  He  was  no  foreign 
missionary  himself;  he  appointed  no  foreign  mis¬ 
sionaries;  he  planned  no  foreign  missionary  cam¬ 
paign;  he  never  suggested  that  the  conversion  of 
the  Gentiles  was  desirable.  To  be  sure,  he  never 
deliberately  counted  them  out,  but  not  once  did  he 
count  them  in.  Though  the  founder  of  a  world 
religion,  he  went  to  his  death  firmly  convinced 
that  he  was  only  the  founder  of  a  new  denomina¬ 
tion  among  the  Jews.  Though  the  founder  of  a 
world  religion,  he  so  little  realized  what  he  was 
accomplishing  that  he  tied  up  his  world  religion 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


246 

to  the  most  exclusive,  the  most  intolerant,  and  the 
most  anti-foreign  religion  on  earth. 

Now,  it  happened  that,  all  this  while,  a  young 
Pharisee  named  Paul  was  studying  the  classics 
under  Rabbi  Gamaliel,  but  glorying  in  his  Roman 
citizenship  and  risking  contact  with  Gentiles.  Not 
long  after  the  Nazarene’s  death  he  became  a  Chris¬ 
tian.  Marvellous  legends  hide  the  circumstances. 
A  historian  of  the  early  church  even  put  those 
legends  into  a  speech  he  says  Paul  delivered.  And 
yet  one  thing  is  clear.  After  his  conversion  Paul 
withdrew  into  Arabia — we  have  his  own  word  for 
that  in  a  letter  he  wrote — and,  if  any  germ  of  anti- 
foreignism  remained  to  be  eradicated,  it  is  evident 
that  the  process  was  complete  by  the  time  he  re¬ 
turned  to  Palestine  and  allied  himself  with  the 
Nazarene’s  followers.  This  Paul,  cured  of  race 
bigotry  and  gifted  with  a  genius  for  understanding 
the  Gentile  mind,  saw  that,  if  only  the  new  faith 
could  be  detached  from  Judaism,  there  was  noth¬ 
ing  to  prevent  its  becoming  a  world  religion  of  the 
first  order.  He  proceeded,  accordingly,  to  detach 
it. 

He  had  never  met  the  Nazarene.  He  had  never 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


247 


heard  him  preach.  He  possessed  no  first-hand 
proof  that  the  Nazarene  meant  to  found  only  a 
new  denomination  among  the  Jews.  Second-hand 
testimony  to  that  effect  he  disregarded.  When  told 
that  the  Nazarene  had  said  he  came,  not  to  destroy 
the  law,  but  to  fulfil  it,  and  when  told  that  the 
Nazarene  had  indorsed  the  ancient  Jewish  sacrifi¬ 
cial  system  along  with  virtually  the  whole  of  Jew¬ 
ish  ceremonialism,  this  former  Pharisee  was  not 
disturbed.  He  rejected  the  law.  He  rejected  the 
ancient  Jewish  sacrificial  system.  He  rejected 
ceremonialism.  When  other  followers  of  the 
Nazarene  declared  that  Gentiles,  in  order  to  be¬ 
come  Christians,  must  first  become  Jews,  he 
spurned  the  idea.  Between  Jews  and  Gentiles 
there  was  no  longer  any  distinction.  All  were 
sons  of  God.  For  all  alike  the  Messiah  had  died. 
Both  Jew  and  Gentile  must  soon  appear  before  his 
judgment  throne,  where  racial  and  even  religious 
antecedents  would  count  for  nothing.  There  was 
no  longer  a  chosen  people.  Henceforth  there  was 
a  chosen  world. 

Yet  a  strange  combination  was  Paul,  and  it  is 
difficult  to  say  which  element  predominated  in 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


248 

him,  the  radical  or  the  conservative;  for  no  sooner 
had  he  detached  Christianity  from  Judaism  than 
he  set  about  attaching  Judaism  to  Christianity.  He 
saw  human  nature  in  the  light  of  the  old  Jewish 
legend  of  Adam  and  his  fall.  He  saw  God  in  the 
light  of  the  ancient  Jewish  legends  of  Jehovah. 
He  saw  the  Nazarene  in  the  light  of  the  ancient 
Jewish  sacrifices.  If  he  denied  that  Gentiles  must 
become  Jews  before  becoming  Christians,  he  went 
an  astonishing  long  way  toward  forcing  them  to 
become  Jews  after  becoming  Christians. 

He  was  a  wonderful,  brilliant,  courageous,  inde¬ 
fatigable,  devoted,  and  altogether  heroic  ambassa¬ 
dor  of  the  faith.  Universality  had  been  inherent  in 
that  faith  from  the  first,  though  its  founder  never 

L.. 

recognized  it.  Paul  not  only  recognized  its  inher¬ 
ent  universality,  he  made  its  inherent  universality 
a  fact.  And  if  he  was  a  bad  theologian — few  have 
been  worse — he  was  exploring  a  new  field  of 
thought  and  making  just  the  mistakes  any  Pharisee 
in  his  place  would  have  made,  except  that  Paul’s 
were  less  numerous. 

But  here  we  are  giving  a  modern  estimate  of 
Paul,  It  is  not  the  theologian’s  estimate.  For 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


249 


theologians,  little  though  they  confess  it,  regard 
Paul  as  a  vastly  more  important  figure,  intellectu¬ 
ally,  than  was  the  Nazarene.  Indeed,  it  is  not  over¬ 
stating  matters  in  the  least  to  say  that  orthodoxy, 
though  little  confessing  it,  regards  the  Nazarene  as, 
intellectually,  the  forerunner  of  Paul. 

So  to-day  we  find  men  ridiculing  Adam  and  his 
fall,  scorning  the  theological  portrait  of  God  as 
Jehovah,  repudiating  the  idea  of  an  altar  victim 
slain  on  their  behalf,  and  fancying  that  thus  they 
reject  the  Nazarene.  They  mistake  themselves. 
They  are  rejecting  only  an  ex-Pharisee  and  ama¬ 
teur  theologian. 


XXX 


EVERYONE  permits  himself  now  and  then  to 
wonder  what  the  Nazarene  would  think  and  say  if 
he  could  visit  a  modern  church,  and,  quite  with¬ 
out  intending  it,  Christian  art  now  and  then  raises 
that  question  within  the  sacred  edifice  itself. 
There,  unconsciously  rebuking  the  splendour,  the 
formalism,  and  the  elaborate  organization  of  mod¬ 
ern  worship,  some  designer  of  stained  glass  shows 
us  the  man  of  Nazareth  preaching  to  Galilean 
peasants  on  a  hilltop  or  beside  a  lake. 

The  rebuke  is  fallacious.  The  same  young  rabbi 
who  taught  chiefly  in  the  open  air  taught  also  in 
the  temple  and  found  nothing  to  condemn  in  the 
temple  service,  splendid,  formal  and  elaborately 
organized  though  it  was.  Frequently  he  taught  in 
synagogues,  but  never  suggested  a  transformation 
of  the  synagogue  service.  Indeed,  we  know  per¬ 
fectly  what  he  expected  a  parish  church  to  be.  It 
was  to  be  a  Jewish  synagogue,  indistinguishable 

250 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


251 

from  its  prototype  save  at  one  point  only.  It  was 
to  be  attended  by  inwardly  transformed  Jews. 

Concerning  the  churches  that  sprang  up  with 
such  rapidity  in  Palestine  and  Syria,  in  Asia  Mi¬ 
nor,  in  the  Aigean  Islands,  in  Greece  and  even  in 
Italy,  little  is  recorded,  yet  that  little  suffices  to 
show  how  astonished  the  man  of  Nazareth  would 
have  been  if  he  could  have  visited  them. 

They  were  no  longer  Jewish  synagogues.  They 
were  strongholds  of  apostasy.  A  new  religion,  a 
religion  the  Nazarene  had  never  sought  to  intro¬ 
duce  and  a  religion  that  often  disregarded  his  own 
teachings,  had  supplanted  the  faith  of  the  fathers. 
Behold,  men  were  praying  to  him  in  those  church¬ 
es!  Men  were  worshipping  him !  It  was  as  if  the 
high  priest’s  accusation  had  been  true  and  he  had 
made  himself  equal  with  God!  Indeed,  he  might 
well  have  been  asked  if  he  had  not  become  of  great¬ 
er  importance  in  the  minds  of  those  worshippers 
than  was  their  Father  in  Heaven. 

Not  once  in  his  whole  life  did  the  suspicion  oc¬ 
cur  to  him  that  such  things  could  ever  happen. 
Tributes  of  affection  he  welcomed ;  worship,  never ; 
and  in  all  his  discourses  on  prayer  he  never  once 


252  THE  MAN  HIMSELF 

hinted  that  men  were  to  pray  to  him.  They  were 
to  worship  God,  and  God  only.  They  were  to 
pray  to  God,  and  to  God  only. 

He  said  a  great  deal  about  prayer.  There  were 
no  limits  to  what  prayer  could  accomplish.  He 
taught  men  how  to  pray.  They  must  avoid  long 
prayers.  They  must  avoid  reiteration  in  prayer. 
They  must  not  pray  in  public;  the  believer  was  to 
enter  into  his  inner  chamber,  shut  the  door,  and 
pray  secretly.  He  even  dictated  a  form  of  prayer 
addressed,  not  to  the  Nazarene,  but  to  God,  and  it 
ended  without  mention  of  himself. 

But,  only  a  short  while  after  his  death,  the 
churches  were  asking  God  to  answer  prayer  for 
the  Nazarene’s  sake.  We  know  because  of  passages 
in  letters  written  by  early  Christians,  who  imply 
that  the  custom  was  prevalent  in  their  day,  and 
who  speak  of  him  as  our  intercessor  before  the 
throne,  our  advocate  with  the  Father.  So  common 
was  the  practice  that  when  his  favourite  pupil 
came  to  write  his  biography,  he  forgot  and  put  into 
his  master’s  own  mouth  words  bidding  men  to  pray 
in  his  name.  Not  content  with  that,  he  made  his 
master  claim  to  be  the  answerer  of  prayer.  In  en- 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


253 


tire  good  faith  he  did  this.  He  was  a  mystic  and 
theologian,  convinced  that  the  Nazarene  had  cre¬ 
ated  the  universe — all  things  were  made  by  him, 
and  without  him  was  not  anything  made  that  was 
made — so  why  should  not  the  Nazarene  be  also  the 
answerer  of  prayer?  And  because  he  had  enjoyed 
such  intimate  companionship  with  his  master  dur¬ 
ing  three  years  of  his  youth,  he  was  unaware  that 
many  of  the  teachings  he  had  received  became 
coloured  with  his  own  theology  long  before  he 
began  writing  his  famous  biography  late  in  life. 

Are  we  then  deploring  the  early  Christian  cus¬ 
tom  of  worshipping  the  man  of  Nazareth  and  of 
praying  to  him  or  in  his  name?  No,  not  at  all.  In 
so  far  as  it  was  a  very  beautiful  and  very  touching 
kind  of  anthropomorphism,  it  had  a  value  only  the 
undiscerning  will  fail  to  appreciate.  It  made  real 
to  First-Century  imaginations  the  humanity  of 
God.  In  days  when  no  one  living  could  think  of 
God  as  a  spirit  without  demanding  somehow  to 
picture  that  spirit,  it  enabled  believers  to  see  God 
through  the  human  tenderness  and  sweetness  and 
devotion  in  a  matchless  human  personality.  If 
meanwhile  it  veiled  the  truth  that  the  same  tender- 


254 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


ness,  the  same  sweetness,  and  the  same  devotion  are 
in  God  himself,  to  whom  the  Nazarene  promised 
men  direct  access,  with  no  need  of  any  intercessor 
or  advocate  whatsoever,  such  truth  was  difficult  of 
comprehension  then,  and,  to  many  a  devout  soul, 
it  is  difficult  of  comprehension  to-day. 

Again,  we  may  be  sure  that  the  prophet  of  Naza¬ 
reth,  had  he  visited  an  early  Christian  church, 
would  have  been  astonished  to  learn  of  deacons, 
of  elders,  of  bishops,  of  a  presbytery,  and  of  a  new 
and  unauthorized  custom,  the  laying  on  of  hands. 
He  had  left  no  instructions  regarding  church  or¬ 
ganization.  He  had  expected  the  synagogue  or¬ 
ganization  to  continue  until  his  second  coming. 
And  this  laying  on  of  hands — what  did  it  mean? 
That  a  new  hierarchy  was  being  established?  He 
had  planned  no  new  hierarchy.  He  had  instituted 
no  rite  of  ordination.  He  himself  had  never  been 
ordained.  If  some  mystic — or  shall  we  say  magic? 
— power  could  be  bestowed  by  the  laying  on  of 
hands,  it  was  a  thing  he  had  not  foreseen. 

Still  again,  the  Nazarene  would  have  been  as¬ 
tonished  to  find  in  the  early  church  a  daily  cere¬ 
mony  known  as  the  love-feast  and  would  have  been 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF  255 

somewhat  puzzled  at  first  by  the  early  Christian 
belief  that  he  had  established  it. 

He  had  commanded  no  such  daily  rite,  though  a 
certain  annual  rite  he  had  endorsed — a  Jewish  rite, 
the  Passover.  According  to  legend,  the  Passover 
commemorated  the  escape  of  Jewish  first-born 
children  when  Jehovah  walked  through  Egypt 
killing  Egyptian  first-born  children;  by  the  blood 
of  lambs  spattered  on  Jewish  door-posts  and 
lintels  he  had  known  which  houses  to  pass 
over. 

The  Nazarene,  when  partaking  of  the  Passover 
meal  with  his  pupils  on  the  eve  of  his  arrest,  was 
reminded  of  the  slain  lambs  and  of  the  mention  of 
a  lamb  in  the  prophetic  sentences  describing  the 
suffering  servant  of  God — sentences  he  had  applied 
to  himself.  Facing  death  and  knowing  it,  he  saw 
in  the  Passover  bread  and  wine  the  symbols  of  a 
new  and  very  different  Passover.  The  bread  was 
his  body.  The  wine  his  blood.  The  new  Pass- 
over  was  to  liberate  men  from  their  bondage  to 
themselves.  Not  in  their  stead,  yet  for  their  sake, 
he  was  to  suffer. 

Addressing  the  little  intimate  group  at  table, 


256  THE  MAN  HIMSELF 

he  told  them  that  this  was  his  last  meal  on  earth 
and  asked  them  to  remember  him  at  each  year’s 
Passover  feast  henceforth,  thinking  of  the  bread 
as  his  martyred  body,  the  wine  as  his  shed  blood. 

That  he  asked  others  besides  his  pupils  to  put 
this  interpretation  upon  the  Passover  feast  does 
not  appear,  nor  can  we  learn  that  he  attributed  to 
it  the  mystical  potentiality  theologians  assume  that 
he  did.  His  favourite  pupil,  though  a  mystic 
through  and  through,  is  the  biographer  who  says 
least  about  it.  Even  Paul  thought  the  ceremony  a 
memorial.  To  him,  it  was  that  only,  albeit  a  most 
sacred  memorial,  whose  profanation  would  bring 
dire  consequences. 

Yet  every  night  in  the  week  the  entire  First 
Century  church  was  observing  the  ceremony,  and 
too  often  the  early  church  abused  it.  At  Corinth 
— but  let  that  pass.  Bad  table  manners  and  exces¬ 
sive  drinking  were  not  so  much  a  reflection  upon 
early  Corinthian  Christians  as  upon  the  paganism 
from  which  those  early  Corinthian  Christians  had 
but  just  emerged.  The  point  worth  noting  is  that 
an  observance  enjoined  only  upon  the  Nazarene’s 
immediate  pupils  had  become  a  universal  observ- 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


257 

ance.  What  he  intended  as  a  yearly  memorial  had 
become  a  daily  memorial. 

A  very  great  surprise  would  have  been  his  could 
he  have  seen  this,  and  still  greater  would  be  his  sur¬ 
prise  if  he  could  attend  worship  at  certain  of  our 
churches  to-day.  There  the  Holy  Communion  is 
for  many  the  profoundest,  most  inspiring,  and  alto¬ 
gether  the  most  beautiful  experience  in  life.  To 
mystics — we  have  still  our  mystics,  and  always 
shall  have — it  brings  exaltation  and  something 
akin  to  ecstasy.  The  mere  fact  that  it  is  a  develop¬ 
ment  of  post-Christian  Christianity  and  unauthor¬ 
ized  by  Christianity’s  founder  need  not  prompt  us 
to  question  its  value — where  value  it  has. 

But  there  are  temperaments  upon  whose  sensi¬ 
bilities  it  exerts  no  such  advantageous  influence. 
There  are  minds  so  made  that  an  unsatisfied  and 
unsatisfiable  inquisitiveness  becomes  disturbing — 
minds  that  seek  to  know  definitely,  precisely,  what 
the  symbolism  symbolizes,  and  lean  toward  unrest 
when  they  fail.  Also,  there  is  a  by  no  means  un¬ 
common  alternation  of  mood — the  same  believer 
will  be  a  mystic  in  one  mood,  something  of  a  ration¬ 
alist  in  another,  and  chide  himself  because  he  can- 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


258 

not  always  find  in  the  Holy  Communion  what  he 
is  devoutly  persuaded  that  he  ought  to  find.  And 
there  are  doubters,  especially  when  the  church 
takes  the  symbol  literally.  Many  a  man  has  reject¬ 
ed  the  Nazarene  because  he  could  not  believe  that 
bread  and  wine  are  by  any  process  to  be  trans¬ 
formed  to-day  into  a  body  that  was  buried  in  an 
unmarked  grave,  somewhere  in  Palestine,  nineteen 
centuries  ago,  and  whose  dust  is  still  there. 

To  all  these  troubled  believers,  and  to  these  dis¬ 
believers  as  well,  one  may  point  out  that  the  broad¬ 
est  liberty  is  granted  to  moderns  as  regards  the  in¬ 
terpretation  and  the  use  of  a  sacrament  never  insti¬ 
tuted  by  the  rabbi  of  Nazareth,  who  would  per¬ 
haps  tell  us  that  the  Holy  Communion  was  made 
for  man  and  not  man  for  the  Holy  Communion. 

And  it  would  seem  that  a  liberty  no  less  broad 
is  granted  to  moderns  as  regards  the  interpretation 
and  the  use  of  baptism.  It  was  not  the  Nazarene 
who  instituted  baptism,  it  was  his  cousin  and  fore¬ 
runner  who  instituted  it.  Though  the  Nazarene 
himself  received  baptism  and  told  his  followers  to 
baptize  their  converts,  not  one  of  his  recorded  ut¬ 
terances  indicates  that  he  attached  importance  to 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


259 


any  precise  mode  of  baptism  as  over  against  an¬ 
other,  nor  do  we  find  that  he  ever  dictated  any 
precise  dogma  to  define  the  meaning  of  baptism. 
From  the  few  things  he  did  say  we  get  the  im¬ 
pression  that  he  valued  it  as  a  symbol  and  as  a 
pledge.  It  symbolized  a  man’s  complete  break 
with  his  past — old  sins  were  washed  away  and  a 
new  life  begun.  It  was  a  pledge  in  that  the  man 
received  baptism  publicly. 

To  ceremonialists,  this  failure  of  the  Naza- 
renes  to  give  definite  instructions  regarding  the  one 
distinctive  ceremony  whose  observance  he  made 
obligatory  and  universal  appears  strange.  It  was 
not.  Except  for  the  reverence  he  had  for  his 
cousin,  all  of  whose  teachings  he  felt  obliged  to 
indorse,  he  would  never  have  commanded  baptism 
or  so  much  as  thought  of  it.  He  was  no  militant 
high  churchman.  Ritual  enough  already  existed 
among  the  Jews.  If  he  was  sufficiently  high 
church  to  tolerate  a  ceremonialism  that  already 
existed,  he  had  no  ambition  to  add  anything  to  it. 
Indeed,  even  his  toleration  of  ceremonialism  had 
its  limits.  By  way  of  rebuking  extreme  insistence 
upon  the  minutiae  of  spiritual  etiquette,  he  would 


260 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


sometimes  go  to  the  opposite  extreme,  deliberately, 
and  eat  with  unwashen  hands.  For  the  militant 
high  churchmen  of  his  day  he  had  only  contempt. 
They  were  blind  leaders  of  the  blind,  substituting 
the  letter  for  the  spirit,  outward  observance  for 
inward  transformation,  piety  for  righteousness. 

In  view  of  all  this,  can  we  not  reply  with  some 
assurance  to  those  who  wonder  what  the  man  of 
Nazareth  would  think  and  say  if  he  could  visit  a 
modern  church?  Its  splendour,  its  formalism,  and 
its  elaborately  organized  service  he  would  ap¬ 
prove,  but  on  one  condition  only.  Its  priestly  sys¬ 
tem  he  would  tolerate,  but  on  one  condition  only. 
Its  modernized  love-feast  he  would  sanction,  but 
on  one  condition  only.  The  mystical  view  of  bap¬ 
tism  he  would  condone,  but  on  one  condition  only. 
Its  mistaken  worship  of  himself  he  would  forgive, 
but  on  one  condition  only. 

That  one  condition  the  Nazarene’s  whole  pur¬ 
pose  makes  plain.  He  demanded  obedience  to  his 
commandments.  From  the  beginning  of  his  mis¬ 
sion  to  the  end  he  demanded  it.  His  death  was  a  de¬ 
mand  for  it.  When  he  came  again  in  glory  to 
judge  the  world,  there  was  to  be  a  single  test — 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF  261 

Had  men  obeyed  his  commandments?  Nothing 
else  would  count.  So  we  ourselves  may  ask  con¬ 
cerning  present-day  piety  the  question  he  would 
ask: 

Does  it  make  men  obey? 


XXXI 


A  PRODIGIOUS  assertion  was  current  among  early 
Christians  regarding  the  Nazarene.  He  had  been 
perfect,  they  declared.  He  had  never  sinned. 
Holy,  guileless,  undefiled,  and  separated  from 
sinners— these  are  their  own  words — he  had  been 
in  character  the  flawless  image  of  God. 

For  centuries  the  assertion  has  gone  unchal¬ 
lenged.  Even  scoffers  accept  it.  The  same  scoffers 
who  jeer  at  his  supposed  miracles,  scorn  his  deifi¬ 
cation,  and  ridicule  two  thirds  of  his  command¬ 
ments  affirm  that  here,  for  once,  was  a  perfect  man. 
How  do  they  know? 

Thirty  years  of  his  life  are  veiled  in  mystery. 
Where  was  he  during  those  thirty  years?  Naza¬ 
reth  had  an  evil  reputation.  It  was  not  a  good 
town  to  grow  up  in.  How  were  those  thirty  years 
spent?  Beyond  our  knowledge  that  he  learned 
carpentry  and  mastered  the  old  Jewish  classics, 
all  is  blank,  nor  is  there  any  record  to  guide  our 

262 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF  263 

surmises  concerning  the  development  of  his  char¬ 
acter  during  those  years.  Was  there  struggle? 
Was  there  a  gradual  enlightenment,  a  progressive 
response  to  enlightenment?  If  so,  when  did  it  first 
dawn  upon  him  that  he  was  the  Messiah?  Of  that 
tremendous  experience,  big  with  portent  not  only 
for  the  man  himself  but  for  all  mankind,  nothing 
is  told  us.  It  would  seem  that  the  Nazarene  never 
spoke  of  it,  and  that  his  strangely  incurious  pupils 
never  asked  him  to. 

And  concerning  the  three  years  of  his  public 
career  as  a  healer  and  teacher,  what  have  we  but 
brief,  fragmentary,  and  intensely  partisan  accounts 
written  by  enthusiasts  who  believed  him  to  have 
been  a  god? 

We  have  much.  The  accounts  themselves  reveal 
far  more  than  their  authors  consciously  sought  to 
reveal.  Those  authors  were  not  consciously  paint¬ 
ing  their  own  portraits,  yet  they  have  done  just 
that.  They  show  us  men  utterly  artless,  utterly 
sincere.  They  show  us  also  the  naive  methods  they 
employed  in  compiling  their  biographies.  Their 
inconsistencies,  their  childlike  faith  in  legends  and 
old  prophecies,  their  proneness  to  let  theological 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


264 

prepossessions  colour  their  apprehension  of  fact — 

* 

all  these  quaint  self-confessions  are  right  on  the 
surface.  They  took  no  pains  to  conceal  them. 
They  have  turned  their  minds  inside  out.  Had 
they  for  one  moment  suspected  that  their  hero  was 
less  noble  in  character  than  they  implied,  the  sus¬ 
picion  would  declare  itself.  We  find  no  trace  of 
any  such  suspicion.  They  are  wholly  convinced. 
Despite  the  unlimited  claims  they  make  for  him, 
we  never  find  them  covering  anything  up.  They 
saw  no  need  of  covering  anything  up.  They  felt 
that  there  was  nothing  to  cover  up,  and  they  real¬ 
ized  that  among  their  readers  there  would  be  many 
who  had  known  the  man  of  Nazareth. 

Again,  they  show  us  his  pupils.  Nothing  is  said 
about  their  unswerving  fidelity  to  him  for  three 
years.  It  is  passed  over  as  a  thing  in  no  wise  re¬ 
markable.  Yet  what  a  testimony  it  gives!  Here 
were  twelve  men,  in  daily,  intimate  contact  with 
him  during  all  that  time.  They  heard  from  his  lips 
such  precepts  as  no  one  in  the  world  had  ever  heard 
from  human  lips  before — strange,  wonderful,  al¬ 
most  blindingly  idealistic  precepts — precepts  that 
would  have  made  any  teacher  ridiculous  in  the 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF  265 

eyes  of  his  pupils  unless  he  had  consistently  lived 
up  to  them,  himself.  Yet  there  were  no  withdraw¬ 
als  from  the  group.  To  the  very  end,  the  twelve 
remained  the  same  twelve. 

Then,  too,  we  have  access  to  letters  written  years 
afterward  by  followers  of  the  Nazarene  and  to  the 
reports  of  speeches  they  made.  Many  of  those 
speeches  were  addressed  to  unbelievers.  They 
were  argumentative.  They  undertook  to  remove 
obstacles  to  faith.  Not  one  of  them  implies  that 
among  such  obstacles  to  faith  was  a  story  discred¬ 
iting  the  man’s  personal  character.  The  letters 
were  addressed  to  early  Christians.  Repeatedly 
they  cautioned  the  faithful  to  beware  of  false  doc¬ 
trine.  There  were  mischief-makers  about,  spread¬ 
ing  unauthorized  beliefs.  Great  harm  they  were 
doing,  thought  the  writers.  But  never  once  in  that 
entire  literature  of  admonition  can  we  find  traces  of 
an  effort  to  discount  any  damaging  rumours  about 
the  Nazarene’s  private  life.  We  are  left  to  con¬ 
clude  that  even  his  worst  enemies,  the  adherents  of 
Jewish  orthodoxy,  had  circulated  no  such  rumours. 

This  is  significant.  For  Judaism  was  on  the  de¬ 
fensive,  at  first,  then  viciously  hostile,  using  every 


266 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


available  weapon  against  the  new  religion,  and  the 
most  effective  weapon  against  a  new  religion,  al¬ 
ways,  is  the  circulation  of  reports  detrimental  to 
its  founder.  In  Nazareth,  where  people  were  any¬ 
thing  but  saints,  it  should  have  been  easy  to  pick  up 
disparaging  gossip,  if  such  there  was.  We  have 
no  evidence  that  this  had  been  done.  We  have  no 
evidence  that  the  experiment  was  ever  thought 
worth  trying. 

Moreover,  from  Nazareth  came  members  of  the 
man’s  own  family.  They  knew  every  detail  of  his 
life  during  those  hidden  years.  If  they  had  at 
first  shown  unwillingness  to  recognize  his  claim  to 
be  a  prophet,  they  made  up  for  it  now,  and  believed 
that  he  had  been  a  god.  His  brothers  joined  the 
Christians. 

Still  more  significant,  when  we  come  to  examine 
it,  is  the  ease  with  which  his  followers  accom¬ 
plished  his  deification.  We  have  said  that  Greeks 
and  then  Romans  had  brought  into  Palestine  the 
idea  that  men  could  be  gods.  Alexander  the  Great 
had  been  a  god.  Caesar  had  been  a  god.  Also  we 
have  said  that,  if  Jehovah  could  be  a  man — and  in 
the  Jewish  mind  he  was  completely  anthropomor- 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF  267 

phic — the  way  was  made  ready  for  a  man’s  deifica¬ 
tion.  But  observe.  Neither  Alexander  nor  Caesar 
had  been  deified  by  popular  acclaim.  They  them¬ 
selves  attended  to  their  deification.  Popular  ac¬ 
claim  came  later.  And  at  best  they  were  mere 
heathen  gods.  Whereas,  the  young  rabbi  of  Naza¬ 
reth  became  a  god  only  after  his  death  and  despite 
his  clear  teachings  to  the  contrary;  and  whereas 
the  young  rabbi  of  Nazareth  became  a  Christian 
god.  Just  here  lies  the  significance  of  his  deifica¬ 
tion.  After  all  his  unprecedented  and  amazingly 
beautiful  declarations  regarding  the  character  of 
God,  declarations  that  had  filled  men  with  awed 
astonishment  when  they  heard  them,  his  own  inti¬ 
mates,  having  known  him  for  three  years,  identi¬ 
fied  him  with  that  God.  This  they  first  did  in  a 
moment  of  excitement.  Afterward,  they  theorized. 
Singularly  diverse  were  their  theories.  But  the 
main  idea  they  never  relinquished.  Nothing  they 
could  remember  about  the  Nazarene’s  character — 
no  slightest  act  or  word  or  impulse — seemed  to 
them  in  any  way  capable  of  invalidating  it.  For 
that  main  idea  they  were  ready  to  sacrifice  their 
lives. 


268 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


But  the  supreme  testimony  to  the  Nazarene’s 
matchless  beauty  of  character  comes,  not  from 
others,  but  from  himself,  secretive  though  he  tried 
to  be.  Concerning  his  own  moral  self-estimate, 
he  said  nothing — except  once,  when  he  repudiated 
the  idea  that  he  was  morally  perfect.  Yet  behold 
what  he  disclosed,  nevertheless! 

We  have  called  him  the  greatest  religious  genius 
of  all  time,  and  so  he  was.  But  religious  genius 
is  not  a  phenomenon  of  intellect  alone  or  of  in¬ 
spired  imagination  alone,  or  of  spiritual  insight 
alone.  It  is  not  a  phenomenon  compounded  of 
all  three.  Primarily  it  is  a  moral  phenomenon. 
From  character  and  from  character  only,  proceeds 
its  enlightenment  of  intellect.  From  character 
and  from  character  only,  proceeds  its  inspired 
imagination.  From  character  and  from  character 
only,  proceeds  its  spiritual  insight.  In  clear  lan¬ 
guage,  though  without  conscious  reference  to  him¬ 
self,  the  Nazarene  revealed  the  secret  of  his  genius. 
Blessed  are  the  pure  in  heart  for  they  shall  see  God. 

There  was  an  unconscious  self-revelation,  too, 
in  his  assumption  of  Messiahship.  For  the  Mes- 
siahship,  as  he  conceived  it,  involved  martyrdom, 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF  269 

and  a  martyrdom  altogether  unique.  Other  heroes 
of  the  faith  have  confronted  martyrdom  suddenly. 
They  have  not  walked  steadily  toward  it  for  years. 
They  have  not  deliberately  adopted  a  career  whose 
culmination,  definitely  recognized  from  the  first, 
was  to  be  the  seeking  and  obtaining  of  a  shameful 
death.  This  man,  the  instant  he  felt  himself  to  be 
the  Messiah,  saw  vividly  the  consequence.  Strong 
indeed  was  the  temptation  to  say  he  had  been  mis¬ 
taken,  that  the  passages  in  those  ancient  scrolls 
must  have  meant  some  one  else  and  not  himself, 
that  he  was  unworthy,  that  it  was  not  he  who  must 
suffer,  that  it  was  not  he  who  must  come  again  and 
judge  the  world.  And  yet,  he  had  no  such  doubts. 
Forth  he  went,  the  most  pathetic  figure  in  history 
— and  the  most  glorious. 

As  we  read  of  him  in  the  narratives  left  us  by 
First-Century  writers,  we  are  struck  with  wonder. 
His  devotion,  his  self-forgetfulness,  his  abounding 
love,  his  heroism,  and  his  complete  purity  of  mo¬ 
tive — whence  came  they?  His  biographers  ac¬ 
count  for  them  by  telling  us  that  he  was  a  god.  He 
himself,  in  teachings  faithfully  recorded  by  those 
same  biographers,  gives  a  different  explanation. 


27  o 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


It  is  not  outspoken.  It  is  implied.  But  it  is  im¬ 
plied  so  often  and  so  consistently  and  so  unmistak¬ 
ably  as  to  amount  to  nothing  less  than  a  confession. 
What  does  it  tell  us?  This: 

That  one  man  actually  dared  to  believe  himself  a 
son  of  God,  and  to  live  as  if  he  were; 

That  one  man  actually  recognized  the  life  of 
God  within  his  own  soul  and  let  it  control  him  com¬ 
pletely; 

That  one  man  actually  thought  there  was  a  power 
making  for  righteousness,  and  trusted  it  to  the  full ; 

That  one  man  actually  risked  calling  the  most 
exalted  idealism  practical,  and  made  it  so; 

In  a  word,  that  one  man  was  Christian  through 
and  through  in  his  beliefs,  and  applied  those  be¬ 
liefs  in  practice,  and  became  Christian  through  and 
through  in  character. 

Very  strange  this  has  seemed  ever  since.  It  was 
not.  If  it  has  seemed  strange,  we  may  suggest  that 
one  reason,  perhaps,  is  to  be  found  in  the  universal 
carelessness  with  which  generation  after  genera¬ 
tion  overlooks  a  remarkable  thing  that  can  happen 
if  a  man  takes  the  Nazarene’s  ideas  seriously. 
They  work. 


XXXII 


In  THIS  our  study  of  the  Nazarene,  we  have 
found  the  man  himself — a  man  of  his  time  yet  of 
all  time — a  man  not  only  credible  but  convincing. 
H  is  faith,  once  we  apprehend  it,  grips  the  modern 
mind  and  conscience;  an  inner  response  gives  it  the 
sanction,  the  tenacity,  and  the  power  he  himself 
foretold.  Lo,  the  Kingdom  of  God  is  within  us! 

To  find  him  has  not  been  difficult.  Any  one  may 
find  him  simply  by  reading  the  Bible  all  through 
uninterruptedly  from  beginning  to  end  with  an 
honest,  open  mind  that  will  let  the  printed  pages 
speak. 

The  very  first  page  warns  the  reader  that  he 
must  distinguish  between  realities  and  unrealities, 
by  showing  a  panorama  of  Jewish  mythology.  It 
is  not  presented  as  such.  The  compilers  never  re¬ 
garded  it  as  such.  They  considered  it  a  master¬ 
piece  of  science  and  of  history.  But  the  reader  is 
quick  to  perceive  its  nature.  It  depicts  an  imagi- 

271 


2/2 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


nary  universe,  an  imaginary  drama  of  creation,  an 
imaginary  god. 

Other  warnings  follow.  Myths  crowd  on  myths 
in  swift  succession,  and  presently  come  stories  in 
which  the  reader  is  reminded  how  myths  originate. 
As  he  knew  before,  they  are  fanciful  explanations 
of  things  that  puzzled  ancient  peoples.  One  type 
of  myth,  illustrated  by  numerous  examples,  is  seen 
to  have  developed  out  of  the  Jews’  inquisitiveness 
concerning  strange  monuments  they  found  and  con¬ 
cerning  the  names  of  places. 

A  pillar  at  Beth-el  set  them  wondering.  Who 
had  erected  it?  What  purpose  had  it  served? 
Why  was  the  place  called  Beth-el?  In  answer  to 
these  questions  came  a  story  about  Jacob  and  his 
dream.  It  was  Jacob  who  had  set  up  the  pillar, 
they  said.  He  had  set  it  up  as  a  monument  to  his 
dream.  And  because  he  saw  angels  in  his  dream, 
he  had  named  the  place  Beth-el,  the  House  of 
God.  Such  stories  abound  in  the  Old  Testament. 
Each  of  them  concludes  with  a  phrase  unwitting¬ 
ly  revealing  the  motive  for  its  invention. 

And  ere  long  the  Bible  acquaints  the  reader  with 
legend.  To  the  writers,  legend  was  not  legend,  it 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


273 


was  history.  Hence  the  entire  absence  of  any  ef¬ 
fort  on  the  writers’  part  to  make  legend  plausible 
or  in  any  way  to  disguise  its  nature.  There  it 
stands,  plainly  discernible  for  what  it  is.  The 
reader’s  attention  is  called  fearlessly  to  giants,  to 
people  who  lived  many  hundreds  of  years,  to  a 
nation  that  walked  dry  shod  through  the  sea,  to  a 
pillar  of  cloud  by  day  and  of  fire  by  night  that  led 
them  in  the  wilderness,  to  miraculous  food  from 
heaven,  to  musicians  who  demolished  a  city  wall 
by  blowing  trumpets. 

Further  on,  the  Bible  sets  over  against  these 
wonder-laden  tales  two  narratives  completely  de¬ 
void  of  wonders.  Ezra  reports  the  march  of 
eighteen  hundred  Jews  homeward  from  exile. 
They  are  not  led  by  a  pillar  of  cloud  by  day  and 
of  fire  by  night.  They  are  not  supernaturally 
rationed.  Nothing  miraculous  occurs  at  all.  Ne- 
hemiah  reports  in  detail  the  rebuilding  of  the  walls 
of  Jerusalem.  Again  no  miracles.  Why? 

As  the  reader  perceives,  it  is  because  both  Ezra 
and  Nehemiah  wrote  shortly  after  the  events  they 
described  and  because  they  described  events  in 
which  they  themselves  had  participated.  Hence 


274 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


the  inference — a  correct  one — that  what  produces 
legend  is  a  story’s  repetition  by  word  of  mouth 
through  a  considerable  period  of  time,  so  that 
when  at  last  somebody  writes  it  down  it  has  but 
little  resemblance  to  fact.  Nor  is  the  reader 
alarmed  by  the  discovery.  All  that  the  Bible  tells 
him  about  ancient  Jewish  life  makes  such  embroid¬ 
ering  of  history  seem  inevitable. 

An  imaginative  race  was  bound  by  customs  that 
fettered  and  starved  the  imagination.  They  had 
no  art.  They  had  no  drama.  The  Bible  mentions 
no  troubadours  or  minnesingers.  The  few  love- 
songs  that  existed  were  interesting  mainly  because 
coarse,  and  the  same  may  be  said  of  the  few  love 
stories  that  existed — notably  the  one  in  which  a 
designing  widow  named  Ruth  fascinated  a  rich 
man  by  getting  into  bed  with  him  at  her  mother- 
in-law’s  suggestion.  Moreover,  the  Bible  discloses 
a  general  dearth  of  games  and  sports  in  a  country 
where  the  recreational  side  of  life  was  still  unde¬ 
veloped. 

This  accounts  for  the  immense  popularity  of 
legend-mongering.  It  was  the  one  amusement,  the 
one  soul-satisfying  outlet  for  the  imagination. 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


2  75 


Among  their  tents  at  night,  beneath  eastern  stars 
and  beside  snoozing  camels,  Jewish  Bedouins  told 
and  retold  miraculous  wonder-compelling  tales 
about  Jehovah  and  the  ancients.  The  oftener  they 
told  them  the  more  miraculous  and  wonder-com¬ 
pelling  the  tales  became. 

However,  imagination  betrayed  now  and  then  a 
curious  paucity  of  resource,  and  an  episode  used 
once  would  be  used  over  again  with  new  char¬ 
acters.  Abraham  takes  his  handsome  wife  to 
Gerar,  introduces  her  as  his  sister,  and  precipitates 
complications.  But  presently  the  reader  learns  of 
Isaac.  He,  too,  has  a  handsome  wife.  He,  too, 
goes  to  Gerar.  He,  too,  introduces  his  wife  as  his 
sister.  He,  too,  precipitates  complications. 

Nor  is  that  all.  The  reader  is  told  how  Joseph, 
having  produced  a  great  impression  by  interpret¬ 
ing  dreams,  became  a  ruler  in  Egypt.  Before  the 
reader  has  had  time  to  forget  this,  he  is  told  how 
Daniel,  having  produced  a  great  impression  by  in¬ 
terpreting  dreams,  became  a  ruler  in  Babylon. 

Then,  too,  he  is  made  acquainted  with  legends 
that  reappear,  only  thinly  disguised,  in  the  New 
Testament.  He  reads  of  women  who  bear  children 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


276 

in  their  old  age,  of  miraculous  annunciations,  of  a 
sovereign  who  orders  infants  slaughtered,  and  of 
a  little  boy,  Samuel,  who  figures  grandly  in  the 
house  of  God. 

To  the  theological  mind,  the  warning  pro¬ 
claimed  by  this  resemblance  between  Old  Testa¬ 
ment  legends  and  New  Testament  legends  is 
shocking.  To  the  theological  mind,  any  one  who 
notes  the  resemblance  is  a  sinner.  Yet  have  not 
theologians  pronounced  the  Old  Testament  a  nec¬ 
essary  introduction  to  the  New  Testament?  It  is, 
but  in  ways  quite  different  from  those  they  insist 
upon.  They  prize  the  Old  Testament  because  it 
aids  them  to  mistake  legend  for  history  in  the  New 
Testament  and  thus  to  erect  that  gigantic  system  of 
unrealities  which,  though  devoutly  endeavouring 
to  establish  truth,  has  the  effect  only  of  hiding 
truth.  The  modern  reader  prizes  the  Old  Testa¬ 
ment  because  it  aids  him  to  distinguish  between 
legend  and  history,  and  thus  to  dissolve  the  entire 
system  of  unrealities  erected  by  theologians. 

In  his  study  of  the  Old  Testament  the  modern 
reader  learns  that  the  recognition  of  legend  as  le¬ 
gend  is  no  calamity.  Only  by  recognizing  legend 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


2  77 


as  legend  in  the  Old  Testament  can  he  recognize 
history  as  history  in  the  Old  Testament.  Only  by 
recognizing  legend  as  legend  in  the  Old  Testa¬ 
ment  can  he  rid  himself  of  a  suspicion  that  the  Old 
Testament  is  a  work  of  imposture,  and  the  more  he 
examines  legend  in  the  Old  Testament,  observing 
how  natural  a  growth  it  was,  how  innocent,  how  in¬ 
evitable,  the  more  he  is  prepared  to  comprehend 
the  naturalness,  the  innocence,  and  the  inevitability 
of  a  similar  growth  elsewhere. 

As  the  Old  Testament  begins  with  a  warning 
to  the  reader,  so  does  the  New.  He  is  told  of  a 
virgin  birth  and  made  aware  that  he  must  still 
discriminate  between  history  and  legend.  Further 
on  in  the  New  Testament  he  comes  to  indications 
that  he  must  distinguish  between  truth  and  the¬ 
ology.  Three  biographers,  one  after  another,  por¬ 
tray  the  Nazarene  as  a  healer  and  prophet.  Mere¬ 
ly  by  stripping  away  legend,  we  behold  the  man 
himself.  He  is  the  same  healer  and  prophet  in  all 
three  biographies.  Then,  at  the  very  front  of  the 
fourth,  not  only  conspicuous  by  position  but  amaz¬ 
ing  in  its  audacity,  stands  a  passage  in  which  the 
healer  and  prophet  suddenly  becomes  the  creator 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


278 

of  the  universe ;  the  same  was  in  the  beginning  with 
God — -indeed,  was  God;  all  things  were  made  by 
him,  and  without  him  was  not  anything  made  that 
was  made. 

Thus  warned — what  fortuitous  warning  could 
be  more  emphatic? — the  reader  is  on  his  guard 
not  only  against  legend  but  against  theology.  He 
finds  theologian  after  theologian  attributing  to 
the  man  of  Nazareth  powers  the  man  of  Nazareth 
never  claimed,  a  nature  the  man  of  Nazareth 
never  imagined  himself  to  possess,  and  ideas  the 
man  of  Nazareth  by  his  own  teachings  repeatedly 
took  pains  to  invalidate.  So  glaring  is  the  con¬ 
trast  between  the  real  man  and  the  fictional 
divinity  created  by  these  early  Christian  theolo¬ 
gians  that  the  reader  has  no  difficulty  in  deciding 
which  to  accept. 

As  he  rounds  out  the  great  task  of  reading  the 
Bible  all  through  uninterruptedly  from  beginning 
to  end,  the  Apocalypse,  intensely  theological  in  its 
interpretation  of  the  Nazarene,  gives  the  final 
impression.  And  what  is  the  Apocalypse?  An 
imitation  of  Ezekiel! 

Theologians  have  told  us  that  the  Bible  contains 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


279 


no  errors.  It  is  of  divine  origin,  they  have  said; 
we  must  accept  its  myths  as  science,  its  legends  as 
history,  its  theological  speculations  as  truth  alike 
infallible  and  complete.  They  have  declared  that 
he  who  doubts  a  word  of  it,  anywhere,  must  in 
reason  repudiate  the  entire  book. 

This  outrageous  superstition,  for  centuries  a 
burden  to  the  devout,  is  fast  perishing,  and,  were 
we  to  suggest  a  superstition  to  replace  it,  we  should 
declare — wholly  without  warrant,  as  is  the  way  in 
suggesting  superstitions — that  a  special  providence 
arranged  the  sacred  books  in  order  with  a  view 
solely  to  warning  the  reader  against  myth,  against 
legend,  and  against  theology. 

It  is  not  so.  No  one  imagines  that  it  is  so.  And 
yet  the  very  arrangement  of  those  books  aids  the 
reader  to  develop  insight  and  caution.  Long  be¬ 
fore  he  comes  to  the  story  of  the  Nazarene,  he  has 
learned  to  distinguish  between  realities  and  un¬ 
realities.  Moreover,  he  has  learned  to  respect 
myth  while  rejecting  it,  and — presently — to  respect 
theology  while  rejecting  it.  As  a  means  toward 
understanding  the  mind  of  antiquity,  myth  is  in¬ 
valuable.  As  a  means  toward  understanding  the 


280 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


religious  sentiment  of  antiquity,  legend  is  invalu¬ 
able;  the  legends  of  the  Nazarene  become  precious 
once  we  recognize  them  as  legends,  for  they  show 
us  the  profound  impression  he  had  made  upon  the 
men  among  whom  he  lived.  And  theology,  though 
now  an  obstacle  to  faith,  was  once  a  help  to  faith. 
It  is  an  obstacle  now  only  when  we  bestow  authority 
upon  it.  As  a  relic  of  devout  antiquity  it  is  pre¬ 
cious.  Even  its  most  glaring  mistakes  are.  For  they 
show  us  the  spell  of  wonder,  of  amazement,  and  of 
blinding  beauty  cast  upon  those  who  knew  him  by 
the  healer  and  prophet  who  died  on  a  cross.  Look¬ 
ing  back,  they  could  account  for  him  in  only  one 
way:  he  had  been  a  god. 


XXXIII 


Hugo  of  St.  Victor  has  been  dead  these  eight 
hundred  years.  He  believed  Jerusalem  the  exact 
centre  of  the  earth.  He  declared  that  the  universe 
had  been  created  instantaneously  and  also  in  six 
days.  He  was  a  devout,  able,  illustrious  scholar, 
but  a  man  of  his  time — the  Twelfth  Century,  A.D. 

Theologians  reject  the  majority  of  Hugo  of  St. 
Victor’s  ideas,  yet  are  still  unable  to  reject  his  idea 
as  to  the  proper  way  of  studying  the  Bible.  He 
stated  it  thus:  “First  learn  what  is  to  be  believed.” 
In  other  words,  begin  with  conclusions;  decide  be¬ 
forehand,  weigh  evidence  afterward;  never  allow 
the  Bible  to  speak  until  you  have  let  theology  tell 
it  what  to  say. 

In  no  other  quest  of  knowledge  do  men  follow 
that  method  to-day,  and  by  following  that  method 
theologians  invite  both  ridicule  and  abuse.  They 
deserve  neither.  Many  of  them  display  brilliant 
gifts  and  enormous  erudition,  not  only  in  the  field 

281 


282 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


of  research  but  in  the  field  of  general  culture  as 
well.  They  are  superior  men.  In  character  they 
are  notable  for  complete  integrity,  disinterested¬ 
ness,  and  devotion.  They  have  but  one  purpose — 
the  conversion  of  mankind.  That,  instead,  they  are 
preventing  the  conversion  of  mankind,  they  fail  to 
perceive. 

It  is  not  at  all  unnatural  that  they  should  fail  to 
perceive  it.  Millions  still  go  to  church.  If  those 
millions  are  plagued  with  doubts  bred  by  the  very 
theology  that  seeks  to  remove  doubts,  they  are 
inarticulate  millions,  who  harbour  their  doubts  in 
silence.  As  inarticulate,  meanwhile,  are  the  much 
more  numerous  millions  who  spurn  the  church. 
These  had  their  spokesmen  once — professional 
“atheists,”  loud-mouthed  and  belligerent.  To-day 
they  have  none. 

So  it  comes  about  that  Twelfth-Century  methods 
appear  not  to  have  lost  their  efficiency.  Moreover, 
both  outside  the  church  and  within  it  there  pre¬ 
vails  an  impression  that  by  employing  Twentieth- 
Century  methods  in  our  study  of  the  Scriptures  we 
should  come  upon  nothing  reliable.  There  is 
nothing  reliable  there,  unbelievers  say,  and  believ- 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF  283 

ers  imply  as  much  by  their  extreme  anxiety  when¬ 
ever  any  one  suggests  that  Twentieth-Century 
methods,  far  from  destroying  faith,  will  rescue 
faith  from  the  destruction  that  now  threatens 
it. 

Again,  among  unbelievers,  among  believers,  and 
even  among  theologians  themselves,  one  observes 
an  entirely  understandable  inclination  to  look  back 
wistfully  to  a  kind  of  Golden  Age.  In  the  time  of 
Victor  of  St.  Hugo  things  went  better  than  at 
present,  they  say;  it  was  the  Age  of  Faith.  If  at 
present  we  believe  less  easily,  they  refuse  to  con¬ 
clude  that  Twelfth-Century  methods  have  been 
outgrown.  They  tell  us  instead  that  piety  has 
declined. 

Yet  when  we  examine  the  Age  of  Faith,  we  find 
that  it  was  also  an  Age  of  Ignorance  and  an  Age 
of  Torture.  Men  easily  believed  the  theologians 
when  there  was  no  knowledge  abroad  to  prevent 
their  believing  and  when  doubt  was  dangerous. 
Credulity  was  no  dazzling  virtue  then.  It  was  the 
line  of  least  resistance.  Quite  confidently  Hugo 
of  St.  Victor  could  declare  that  the  universe  had 
been  created  instantaneously  and  also  in  six  days. 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


284 

No  one  alive  at  the  time — and  desiring  to  stay 
alive — dared  contradict  him.  Not  less  confidently 
he  could  declare  that  in  studying  the  Bible  one 
must  begin  with  conclusions,  decide  beforehand 
and  weigh  evidence  afterward,  and  never  allow  the 
Bible  to  speak  until  theology  had  been  permitted 
to  tell  it  what  to  say. 

For  eight  hundred  years  Victor  of  St.  Hugo  has 
ruled  theology.  Though  few  Protestants  have  ever 
heard  of  him  and  though  he  was  never  Pope  of 
Rome,  he  is  even  to-day  the  uncrowned  Pope  of 
Protestantism.  In  studying  the  Bible,  Protestants 
still  obey  Hugo  of  St.  Victor  and  “learn  first 
what  is  to  be  believed” — yes,  in  this  Twentieth 
Century! 

Ruinous  are  the  results.  For  when  theologians 
tell  us  what  is  to  be  believed  about  the  Bible — that 
its  writers  were  miraculously  restrained  from 
copying  myths  into  it,  from  copying  legends  into 
it,  and  from  indulging  in  unwarranted  and  unwar¬ 
rantable  metaphysical  speculations  of  their  own — 
the  Bible  itself  bids  us  choose  between  Scripture 
and  theology — indeed,  between  truth  and  theology. 
For  there  stand  the  myths.  There  stand  the  leg- 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF  285 

ends.  There  stand  the  metaphysical  speculations, 
at  once  unwarranted  and  unwarrantable.  And  the 
reader,  forbidden  to  distinguish  between  reality 
and  unreality,  is  betrayed  in  a  needlessly  be¬ 
wildered  state  of  mind  that  attaches  no  more  actual 
weight  to  the  real  than  to  the  unreal.  He  has  never 
the  untroubled,  because  automatic,  conviction  that 
he  is  anywhere  dealing  with  facts  as  authentic  and 
undeniable  as  those  in  other  realms  of  history.  He 
is  conscious  at  best  of  exercising  faith.  In  exer¬ 
cising  it  he  feels  virtuous.  For  human  nature  is 
so  made  that  whenever  we  tell  ourselves  a  thing  is 
true,  though  probably  not,  we  think  we  do  God 
service. 

Beginning,  as  it  did,  in  the  days  when  legends 
were  mistaken  for  history  and  when  only  the  mi¬ 
raculous  appealed  strongely  to  the  imagination, 
theology  based  its  speculations,  not  upon  the  facts 
in  the  Nazarene’s  biographies,  but  upon  the  leg¬ 
ends  with  which  early  Christians  had  affectionately 
and  in  all  innocence  embroidered  the  facts.  Leg¬ 
ends,  not  facts,  made  the  rabbi  of  Nazareth  a  god. 
Once  he  became  a  god,  new  legends  arose,  from 
which  in  turn  arose  new  dogmas.  Must  he  not 


286 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


have  been  supernaturally  born?  Must  he-not  have 
performed  miracles?  Must  not  his  death  have 
meant  a  reconciliation  between  God  and  man?  To 
answer  these  questions  theology  propounded  dogma 
after  dogma.  Then,  by  way  of  harmonizing  its 
dogmas  one  with  another,  it  created  additional 
dogmas  and  a  gigantic,  high-towering  metaphysi¬ 
cal  system  to  contain  them  all,  and  a  dogma  of 
scriptural  infallibility  for  the  system  containing 
them  all  to  rest  upon. 

From  top  to  bottom  there  was  nothing  real  in 
any  of  this.  Hence  the  warnings,  later  on,  from 
such  theologians  as  the  great  Hugo  of  St.  Victor. 
Any  one  reading  the  Bible  all  through  with  an 
open  mind  would  have  seen  how  imaginary  was  the 
system’s  foundation,  how  imaginary  was  the  system 
itself,  and  how  imaginary  were  the  dogmas  that 
composed  it,  so  no  one  must  read  the  Bible  all 
through  with  an  open  mind.  The  reader  must 
first  learn  what  was  to  be  believed.  Then,  when¬ 
ever  the  Bible  told  him  plainly  that  no  such  thing 
could  be  believed,  he  must  twist  the  text  into  con¬ 
formity  with  dogma. 

In  the  goodness  of  his  heart  Hugo  of  St.  Victor 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF  287 

commanded  this.  He  was  not  dishonest.  Yet  we 
have  no  difficulty  in  detecting  the  motive  which, 
little  though  he  realized  it,  prompted  him  to  warn 
his  contemporaries  against  reading  the  Bible  with 
an  open  mind.  It  was  a  motive  common  among 
theologians — namely,  fear.  That  gigantic,  high- 
towering  metaphysical  system  upon  which  Hugo 
of  St.  Victor  thought  men’s  salvation  depended — 
how  frail  his  warning  acknowledged  it  to 
be! 

Throughout  its  history  theology  has  tacitly,  but 
unmistakably,  confessed  a  profound  uneasiness. 
It  has  been  for  ever  arguing  itself  into  accepting 
itself.  Whole  libraries  of  apologetics  attest  its 
nervousness,  its  dread  that  the  gigantic,  high-tow¬ 
ering  metaphysical  system  might  fall  by  its  own 
weight.  In  every  new  advance  of  learning  it  has 
seen  a  foe.  Geography,  astronomy,  geology,  arch¬ 
aeology,  anthropology,  meteorology,  chemistry, 
physics,  surgery,  philology,  biology  and  modern 
Biblical  research — at  one  time  or  another,  it  has 
attacked  them  all,  not  because  it  abhorred  truth, 
but  because  it  trembled  for  its  own  exceedingly 
precarious  existence.  And  there  have  been  crises, 


288 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


best  forgotten,  when,  not  from  cruelty  but  from 
fright,  it  could  resort  to  violence. 

To-day,  it  faces  a  real  foe — religion.  For  a 
strange  anomaly  is  our  so-called  Age  of  Doubt. 
Formerly  there  were  men  who,  beholding  the 
gigantic,  high-towering  system  of  dogmas,  com¬ 
plained  that  it  was  too  big;  we  hear  a  new  com¬ 
plaint  now— that  it  is  too  little! 

It  teaches  that  once,  very  long  ago  and  in  an 
out-of-the-way  country,  God  descended  to  earth. 
Whereas,  in  our  so-called  Age  of  Doubt,  we  are 
unable  to  believe  that  God  was  ever  absent  from 
any  part  of  his  universe. 

It  teaches  that  once,  very  long  ago  and  in  an 
out-of-the-way  country,  God  expressed  himself  in 
terms  of  humanity.  Whereas,  in  our  so-called  Age 
of  Doubt,  we  are  unable  to  believe  that  God  ever 
ceases  to  express  himself  in  terms  of  humanity. 
We  are  his  children.  In  him  we  live,  move,  and 
have  our  being. 

It  teaches  that  once,  very  long  ago,  and  in  an 
out-of-the-way  country,  God  demonstrated  the 
power  of  divine  will  by  interfering  with  natural 
law.  Whereas,  in  our  so-called  Age  of  Doubt,  we 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF  289 

are  unable  to  believe  that  interfering  with  natural 
law  could  demonstrate  the  power  of  divine  will, 
for  we  are  unable  to  believe  that  natural  law  can 
be  interfered  with.  Natural  law  and  the  power 
of  divine  will  are  to  us  the  same  thing. 

Finally,  it  teaches  that  once,  very  long  ago  and 
in  an  out-of-the-way  country,  God  reconciled  him¬ 
self  to  his  children  by  sacrificing  his  own  son. 
Whereas,  in  our  so-called  Age  of  Doubt,  we  are 
unable  to  believe  that  God  was  ever  estranged  from 
his  children.  God  is  love. 

We  are  great  heretics.  Granted.  Theologically, 
we  are  lost.  Rocks  and  stars  and  living  things  have 
taught  us — these  and  the  hearts  of  men — until 
there  is  more  belief,  actually,  in  our  so-called  Age 
of  Doubt  than  there  was  in  the  Age  of  Faith. 
There  is  more  religion. 

And  we  see  that  all  this  has  come  to  pass,  not  in 
spite  of  doubt,  but  because  of  it.  Doubt  brings 
faith.  Itself  fearless,  it  brings  a  faith  that  knows 
no  fear.  So,  in  our  study  of  the  Bible,  we  no 
longer  feel  constrained  to  obey  Hugo  of  St.  Victor 
and  learn  first  what  is  to  be  believed.  We  no  long¬ 
er  begin  with  conclusions.  We  no  longer  decide 


290 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


beforehand  and  twist  Scripture  to  fit  our  own  the¬ 
ories.  We  no  longer  forbid  the  Bible  to  speak 
until  theologians  have  told  it  what  to  say.  We  no 
longer  heed  the  theologians’  warning  against  the 
pitfalls  that  beset  the  path  of  human  reason.  Rocks 
and  stars  and  living  things  have  taught  us  that 
truth  is  reasonable. 

For  so  it  is,  and  never  more  reasonable  than 
when,  in  a  spirit  wholly  modern,  we  rid  our  minds 
of  all  theological  prepossessions  and  let  Scripture 
speak  for  itself.  Myth,  legend,  and  metaphysical 
speculation  vanish,  and,  in  the  same  Bible  where 
theologians  have  found  only  dogmas  with  which 
to  hide  him,  the  Nazarene  stands  revealed,  promis¬ 
ing  salvation,  though  on  one  condition  only — obe¬ 
dience  to  his  commands. 

It  is  a  solemn  experience,  this  of  beholding  the 
man  himself.  It  is  an  experience  for  which  most 
men  are  unprepared,  and  it  brings  them  at  first  a 
sensation  not  so  much  of  discovery  as  of  being  dis¬ 
covered.  Across  the  centuries  the  Nazarene  seems 
to  ask  them  why  they  have  been  afraid  ere  this  to 
acknowledge  that  myth  was  myth,  that  legend  was 
legend,  that  unwarranted  and  unwarrantable  spec- 


THE  MAN  HIMSELF 


291 


ulation  was  unwarranted  and  unwarrantable  spec¬ 
ulation,  and  afraid,  therefore,  to  seek  the  man  him¬ 
self.  Here  was  the  light  of  the  world — real !  Here 
was  the  way,  the  truth,  and  the  life — real!  Here 
was  the  master — real!  Well  might  he  have  cried 
out  as  of  old,  “O  ye  of  little  faith!” 


THE  END 


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